The reason I ask is because I've noticed the quality of food at restaurants keeps going downhill as more and more immigrants get get brought in to work at these restaurants (especially Indians). I've been avoiding eating out because of it but now all the grocery stores have Indians handling the food I'm buying there. I also know that most food processing before it even gets to the grocery stores is done by immigrants with the quality of those immigrants likely decreasing over time (especially the last 10 years in Canada). There's no way rich people are poisoning their own food... so where are they buying their food from?
Do you think there's like a special rich person farm collective where certain farms produce food specifically for the rich elite only? Or could major food conglomerates also have a rich-person food processing division? Maybe, it's their Kosher division, etc... Anyone know?
Depends on what level of rich you’re talking about and the region. The standard single digit millionaires usually just do more upscale food markets, upscale dining out, and some source meat and other things from local farms depending on their quality. When you get to the double to triple digit millionaires you get more variety, some are weird diets like fruitarian/ vegan/ whatever, some have personal chefs/ dieticians who source everything, and some, like my family friends, will pull out some elk they shot last week.
That’s the Midwest though.
Ahh, so you basically hire a Chef and make him responsible for finding the food sources.
I guess my question is how do these Chefs find the best sources of food? Is there a directory? Word of mouth? Do they drive to every farm and knock on doors? Ask to buy X amount of ingredients per week straight from these sources and then pick them up once a week as like a full-time job, basically?
If your client is that big of a name, you probably went to culinary school where they'll network you with vendors.
Ahh, so checking in with the Culinary Schools might be a good way to find places to source quality food from?
Correct. In becoming a "good chef" they'll spend a lot of time in the kitchen & learn first hand what sources are cheap, good or outstanding.
The high end restaurants typically order through some sort of service, who gets it directly from a warehouse distributor or through specialty stores. Proper storage & prep are very important.
Source: My (former) buddy was a 3-Star chef. That's 3/3 back in the day, very difficult to get!