When executive chef Kyle Griffith received a random call from a guest at the Omni Hotel Nashville the day after a banquet, he was expecting the worst.
But when the guest met Griffith, “the first thing she did was give him a hug,” recalls Todd Roadarmel, area director of sales and marketing.
The reason? Griffith served jackfruit in carnitas as one of the buffet’s offerings, and the guest, Mary McLaughlin, is the founder of Trees that Feed Foundation, which plants jackfruit and breadfruit trees for farmers, and especially farmers who are also single mothers, who live near or on the equator, and then buys back the fruit. The trees produce vegan alternatives to meat and absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide from the environment, which helps to offset emissions.
Contributed by Jeanette Hurt
The meeting was in November, and the Tennessee hotel had been serving jackfruit for just a few months. When Griffith started experimenting with jackfruit, the hotel went through about 25 pounds every two months; today, the hotel is selling from 150 to 200 pounds every two months, with sales continuing to increase.
“A lot of vegans and vegetarians struggle with options at restaurants, and many hotels offer them the same sort of tofu, cauliflower steak and produce, but at our hotel, if one group is getting pork carnitas, the vegetarian (within that group) can also enjoy jackfruit carnitas,” Griffith says.
The chef uses it in a Cuban sandwich, in chili and tossed with fennel as a sausage substitute for pizzas. “This is just blossoming,” he says. “Customers care more about the sustainability of the products we use. And it’s an easy sell for our staff.”
It’s also financially good. “Jackfruit ranges in price from US$2 to US$3 per pound, and if you look at a prime cut of meat, which goes for US$8.50 per pound or pork shoulder and chicken at US$1.80 a pound,” he says.
When the hotel started purchasing jackfruit, its local supplier didn’t always have it in stock. “There has been a small challenge, where we had to go two, almost three weeks out, if we had 500 people that wanted jackfruit on their menu, and we had to give them time to get that product in,” Griffith says. “Now, they’re keeping it in stock for us, and they’re pushing it to other hotels and restaurants in the area, and that’s probably all due to what we’ve done to get that product in.”
It could also be a boon to McLaughlin: Every year the hotel considers donating to or supporting different foundations, and for 2019, Trees That Feed is “at the top of our list,” Roadamel says.
“We also are looking to find a vendor that will ship her (jackfruit) to Nashville, and that is one of the initiatives we want to start out with,” he says.