2014 RH 25: Foodshed

Partner Spike Gjerde

Baltimore

Annual Sales: $13 million

Units: 5

Key Personnel:
• Spike Gjerde, partner
• Amy Gjerde, partner
• Corey Polyoka, partner
• Hannah Ragan, director of service training and outreach
• Alison Kirby, Foodshed manager

SINGLE CONCEPTS:
• Woodberry Kitchen (locally sourced American cuisine)
• Artifact Coffee (coffee bar)
• Shoo-fly (farmhouse diner fare)
• Parts & Labor (butcher shop and restaurant)
• Canningshed (canning facility)

UPCOMING PROJECTS:
• Parts & Labor retail shop at Belvedere Square
• Potential taco shop/restaurant

WHY IT’S COOL: Spike Gjerde has opened four restaurants since 2007 with one single mission in mind: feeding his family and his community with products found only in the Chesapeake region. Local sourcing has since become cliché, and the farm-to-table movement has morphed into a marketing phrase. When talking to the humble and soft-spoken Gjerde, you can tell it irritates him. He chooses his words carefully, and he’s astoundingly passionate about the people, places and things of Baltimore. He doesn’t want you to think his company, Foodshed, is doing anything for the wrong reasons. Gjerde and his wife Amy opened Woodberry Kitchen in 2007 with admittedly very little sense of what a commitment to local sourcing meant. Availability and price proved to be immediate challenges, but instead of caving or compromising they stuck with it. They began to hone their strategies—canning and preserving seasonal product and eventually opening a canning facility. One coffee shop and another restaurant later, and Foodshed began exploring butchery. Buying whole animals inspired Parts & Labor, a butcher shop and restaurant that would provide meat for Foodshed’s three other locations. Parts & Labor will have 24 local beers on tap--not because meat and beer make for a popular concept, but because Gjerde met “farm brewers” now using their own farm products to make beer.

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