Trinity Wall Street - News & Blogs - News - Fresh From the Farm to the Square

Fresh From the Farm to the Square

May 3, 2011

Great Performances, a business that has been part of the Hudson Square neighborhood for more than thirty years, defies easy description. Started in 1979 as a waitress staffing service for women in the arts, Great Performances is now a premiere catering and party planning company that runs museum and cultural center cafes around the city. Much of the food served by the company comes from its own Katchke Farm, located in upstate New York. Great Performances also created the Sylvia Center, a gardening and cooking program designed to teach children about nutrition and nature.

This spring, Great Performances is launching a corporate Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program, bringing local, seasonal food — and chefs — to companies in Hudson Square.

Traditional CSAs connect small farms with groups of people eager for local, seasonal produce. Consumers buy a share of a CSA, and farmers deliver a weekly or biweekly basket of food throughout the growing season.

Great Performances’ Corporate CSA program is structured specifically for Hudson Square’s innovative companies, allowing them to set up a weekly purchase of produce for their employees.

“The CSA is very customizable. We’ll be working closely with company representatives to find out what works for them,” Alice Walton, Great Performances’ Farm Project Coordinator, explains. “Companies can choose the size of the shares — $5, $10, or $25 — and how often the produce is delivered.”

Employees can pay directly, or the companies can offer the CSA as a green benefit. Great
Performances hopes the CSA will be a healthy addition to the environmentally and socially responsible policies many Hudson Square corporations have adopted.

Mindful of the difficulties of lugging a box of produce home on a subway, the CSA will offer downsized shares to appeal to city dwellers. And to help ease folks into the world of heirloom celeriac and ramps, Great Performances will also offer cooking demos in the workplace. Veteran chefs will offer relaxed tutorials on making panzanella, quick pickles, and beet-citrus tapenade.

Liz Neumark, CEO of Great Performances, sums it up: “With the Corporate CSA program, we are responding to both the demand for healthy food and a growing desire to learn how to prepare fresh produce. Savvy companies are engaging their employees in these experiences right in the workplace.”

Leah Reddy

Nina Simmons, a Great Performances chef, teachers cooking camp student Skylar, 9, about the uses for fennel.

Return to Trinity News:
Life Here in the Sacramental Universe