{"id":322671,"date":"2026-11-06T21:42:07","date_gmt":"2026-11-06T21:42:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/322671\/"},"modified":"2026-11-06T21:42:07","modified_gmt":"2026-11-06T21:42:07","slug":"how-climate-change-is-affecting-philly-restaurant-bills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/322671\/","title":{"rendered":"How climate change is affecting Philly restaurant bills"},"content":{"rendered":"

\ud83d\udc8c Love Philly? So do we. Let\u2019s be friends. Sign up for the Billy Penn newsletter today<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Climate change is coming for your restaurant bill. A late freeze this April has had lasting effects on produce into the fall.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe farmer is the first person to feel the impacts of climate change,\u201d said Christa Barfield, founder and CEO of FarmerJawn. \u201cIt trickles down to the consumer later on.\u201d<\/p>\n

The spring freeze<\/a> hit Pennsylvania\u2019s orchard and fruit farmers particularly hard.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cTheir blooms were already on their trees, and they lost pretty much every one of them,\u201d Barfield explained. \u201cMost farmers in the Northeast said that they lost about 70% of their crop, and that is financially devastating.\u201d<\/p>\n

The event caused major damage on apples, plums, peaches, kumquats and other tree-born fruits. Some Pennsylvania apple orchards have even had to cancel their apple-picking<\/a> season or source from Midwest and Western states.<\/p>\n

\u201cRestaurateurs are buying things from further away,\u201d Barfield said. \u201cEven the distribution channels that exist, those food distributors are getting fruit from much further away as well. So in California, we\u2019re shipping fruit from over 3,000 miles, or even outside of the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shipping, of course, can get pricey. Not only are diesel costs on the rise, but tariffs can come into play. <\/p>\n

According to Shan Kumar, assistant professor of tree fruit at\u00a0Penn State Extension<\/a>\u2018s College of Agricultural Sciences, weather patterns are becoming increasingly extreme. <\/p>\n

\u201cEverywhere we have seen historic new trends,\u201d Kumar told Pittsburg\u2019s Public Source<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s harder to do agriculture because of climate change, that\u2019s just a fact that we\u2019re all living with.\u201d <\/p>\n

He noted that last April\u2019s freeze kicked his fructification research \u201cinto high gear.\u201d<\/p>\n

This October, Barfield helped lead a roundtable with the James Beard Foundation, U.S. Rep. Madeleine Dean, as well as restaurant owners, chefs and farmers across Pennsylvania to tackle the problem. Local Philly restaurateurs like Christina Rodriguez from South Philly Barbacoa and Ellen Yin from\u00a0 High Street Hospitality Group were present.<\/p>\n

\u201cFarms can\u2019t exist without restaurants, and vice versa,\u201d said Anne McBride, vice president of impact at the James Beard Foundation.<\/p>\n

The idea of the roundtable was to connect those in food, farming and hospitality to lawmakers, and advocate for legislation and programs that help regenerative agriculture and combat climate change.<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth farming and the restaurant industry function on very, very small margins,\u201d McBride said. \u201cThe average margin of an independent restaurant is 3 to 5%, and that\u2019s in a good year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Higher prices on produce eat into that profit margin, which can make it harder to absorb any other business hurdles.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSeeing increased prices on menus, it is not because chefs or farmers are getting any richer,\u201d she added. \u201cThese are two industries that are doing it out of passion, because if they were in it for the money, they would do anything but farming or owning independent restaurants.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite increasingly unpredictable weather, Barfield said she believes there are solutions \u2014 one of which is adjusting to more resilient crops.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are starting to see our agricultural zones change from 7a to now 7b, and who knows where it\u2019s going to go,\u201d she said. \u201cSo we want to help restaurants be able to prepare their customer base for the changes and help them to truly eat in season.\u201d<\/p>\n

This also will involve educating the public on what they should expect to be available.<\/p>\n

\u201cTeaching people about the word varieties is really key,\u201d Barfield said. \u201cHelping them understand that for every tomato, there are 1,000s of varieties, some that grow better in different climates. Our goal is to be able to get some of those seeds from the different climates where we can\u2019t normally get them and bring them here.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition, McBride is advocating for restaurants to connect more with farmers when they are menu planning. And not just on the phone. She believes that everyone should visit the outdoor spaces where their food comes from.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth communities work 16-hour days alone in their respective area,\u201d McBride said. \u201cSeeing the ingredient growing, seeing an ingredient they might be familiar with in July, and they\u2019re suddenly seeing it in early October \u2014 they\u2019re thinking about it differently.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both McBride and Barfield say that the one of the best things to do on the consumer end, is to support local farmers.<\/p>\n

\u201cShop your farmer first, and that\u2019s really what it comes down to,\u201d Barfield said. \u201cShop restaurants that focus on relationships with farmers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGo to the farmers market. Visit farms. Go to farm stands, not just pumpkin patches or apple pickups,\u201d McBride said. She pointed to events like Phoenixville\u2019s Good Food Fest, which is billed as the largest single-day outdoor food festival in Pennsylvania. \u201cSupporting local farms as year round as possible is critical.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\ud83d\udc8c Love Philly? So do we. Let\u2019s be friends. Sign up for the Billy Penn newsletter today. Climate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":322672,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[130810,264,7119,61,1131,130811,62411,5626,564,1515,7566,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-322671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-apple-orchards","tag-climate-change","tag-dining","tag-economy","tag-environment","tag-farmer-jawn","tag-farmers-markets","tag-farming","tag-featured","tag-food","tag-james-beard","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}