They say that you are what you eat, but most city people don't really understand exactly where their food comes from, how it is grown, or how important it is to be mindful of how it ends up on their plates and in their stomachs.
Over the past twelve months, there has been a resurgence of interest in health, wellness and in healthy eating due to the COVID-19 crisis. More people than ever are taking stock of their lifestyle choices, including how they feed themselves.
This does not come as a surprise to Sid Sehgal and Anchit Sachdev, co-founders of The Fresh Food Company, operator of Bangkok’s Getfresh chain of health-inspired restaurants.
The idea for Getfresh was born from a desire to provide a dining experience that was quickly becoming popular in North America and Europe to the people of Bangkok.
Recently the two founders sat down with Marketplace to discuss how they foresaw the shift towards more mindful eating in the Thai dining scene and how they are positioning getfresh to provide healthy food to as many people in Thailand as possible.
"Over a decade ago, I realised that there was going to be an increasing amount of concern about the way that Thai people feed themselves." Sehgal said, "I wanted to make it easy for busy Bangkok consumers to have quick, delicious, healthy, high-value meals, sustainably sourced without them having to worry about the details themselves."
In the not-so-distant past, most food available in Bangkok’s restaurants, whether fine-dining or street-side, was made with produce grown nearby in the Thai countryside. Trains overflowing with fresh vegetables would pull into Bangkok’s stations every morning where chefs would gather in order to buy the ingredients for the day ahead. With globalization and an increasingly price-conscious consumer, food started being brought to Thailand from further abroad, requiring an earlier harvest, ripening during transit, an increased use of pesticides and generally a less-fresh ingredient. This shift has seen a dramatic decline in the overall healthiness of what ends up on the plate of a typical Thai restaurant goer.
With competitive pressures everywhere and consumers being more mindful than ever about their food budgets, it takes constant time and attention to stay at the forefront of the local food scene. What many consumers don’t still understand is that low prices often come with a hidden cost to their health, or the well-being of the planet.
The Getfresh restaurants have made a habit of scouring the globe for new ingredients, products and supplies, with a strong preference for sourcing only the finest ingredients from small farmers throughout the Kingdom. Since the original concept was designed in the minds of Sehgal and Sachdev, the pair knew that they wanted to be at the leading edge of what was possible to deliver in the Bangkok market.
“Fine dining has always had the margins to be a little more experimental – especially when a celebrity chef has a following that will allow him or her to try new things. In a quick service format, like Getfresh, the price sensitivity of the typical consumer is very high. For this reason, we need to ensure that we deliver nothing except the highest value every single time,” said Mr. Sachdev.
In order to serve the quality at the prices offered, the job of visiting farms and talking to suppliers is a never-ending one.
"Between our chef, our purchasing team, and myself, I estimate that we have travelled more than 10,000 km throughout Thailand over the past five years," Mr. Sehgal continued.
"We have met wholesalers, distributors, farmers and farm hands throughout Thailand to make sure that we are not only buying the best products, but that the products we serve our customers are also sustainably produced. It is very important to us that we partner with members of the community that are helping improve the lives of the rural Thai people that are the backbone of our food supply chain."
Some of the considerations that go into developing supplier contracts are establishing if facilities are clean and the treatment of people and livestock is ethical. Whenever possible, products grown in a chemical-free, hormone-free, and pesticide-free manner are preferred.
One area that is still a new concept to many in Thailand is the impact that supply chains have on the carbon footprint of companies and individuals. Getfresh is at the forefront of monitoring their supply chain to minimise the carbon footprint at every stage of product manufacture, delivery and production.
The Getfresh team does import some of the goods used in its menu creations, things like apples and beef from Australia and New Zealand, but the vast majority of products sold are sourced domestically.
When seasonality is important, the company will import items when necessary in order to keep prices low to ensure that they are always getting good value for their money.
"At first, we wanted to source all the avocados used in our recipes from Chiang Mai, but we soon realised that due to the popularity of some of our dishes we would have to import some from other places that were able to guarantee availability year-round."
Surprisingly to many, even some products that might typically be imported are being produced by culinary artisans locally. The mozzarella cheese, for example is being produced in Khao Yai by Caroline, a high quality cheesemaker that belongs to a friend of Mr. Sehgal.
All of the dairy milk used at Getfresh is sourced from Dairy Home in Khao Yai, which contains over 50% more Omega-3, 20% more Omega-6, and has less cholesterol than regular milk.
When products available in the market do not meet the getfresh standard, the company has even gone so far as to establish their own farm facilities. The first example of this strategy is literally bearing fruit already in Chiang Mai, where the Getfresh Farm is able to provide a sufficient supply of the finest organic heirloom tomatoes. This initiative is expected to grow over time, but always in association with local growers who have typically been in the business for long enough to deliver on world-class standards of quality and taste.
Mr. Sehgal’s relatives own a free-range organic chicken farm north of Chiang Rai, called Hilltribe Organics, where chicken roam free in beautiful conditions and much-needed income is created for the Akha and Karen hilltribes. Another brand under the same group, Perfect Earth, employs hilltribe communities to produce organic chia seeds, which are also featured at all Getfresh branches.
"The most important factor for us in finding partners to supply the Getfresh restaurants is that they share our commitment to sustainability and uncompromising quality," Sid said, as he sipped one of the fermented Kombucha beverages from another local partner, Three Goats.
"After that commitment to sustainability and quality, a desire to improve the lives of the people who trust us with their time and food budget is the main thing that drives us to relentlessly improve the getfresh experience. We often find that once people experience our menu they become long term customers. It really is hard to communicate the difference that the highest quality ingredients make to taste and healthfulness, but once you've tried it, you tend to be satisfied by nothing less.”
As health and wellness gain importance and food sustainability and healthfulness continue to become more important to the Thai consumer, you can be sure that getfresh will continue to be a thought leader in the marketplace as they have been from the beginning.
