Having worked in a number of restaurants over the years, I’m surprised this hasn’t occurred to me before. Asking restaurant management to be more conscious of gluten-free foods may not be the most effective way to change the industry. Many mid-level managers who run the day-to-day have little impact on the foods and ingredients they buy, even if they have completely control over the menu. That’s because anything they put on the menu has to be sourced from a distributor, and for an overwhelming percentage of restaurants, that distributor is Sysco. This occurred to me as I sat in an airport restaurant looking at a box of Sysco kosher crackers. Sysco is the brand, the manufacturer and the distributor of most foods we eat in restaurants.

This means that while a restaurant manager might see the advantages in offering celiac-friendly menu items, his first attempt to devise such n offering is likely to be discouraging when dealing with the industrialized offerings of Sysco. While Sysco adapts to trends – they have a nutrient calculator and vegetarian diet offerings delineated on their site – a simple search for celiac, or even gluten, returns zero hits.

Helping restaurants might mean helping Sysco. While Sysco could easily seem like the barrier here, seeing them as the ultimate vehicle is more productive. Because in some cases, a gluten-free item doesn’t need to be a special manufacture, it can be the standard, and that’s music to Sysco’s ears.

Contact Sysco