The interactions between producers and retailers consist of many to many relationships. The complexity of the interaction increases with the more producers a retailer supports because of the time that must be invested into each interaction and personal relationship. We interviewed people who were heavily involved in the local food community, and as a result had strong motivations for seeking out and supporting local farmers and passing on the costs of those interactions to consumers who had similar cares.

Thus, as a function of who we interviewed, many interviewees saw few ways to improve the relationship between retailers and producers, because they cared enough to put in the extra effort to call producers, track down ingredients, adapt their daily menu and charge appropriate prices. Some went as far to note that good is not supposed to be easy. "Sometimes it is not always about the easiest way to do something. I wish there were not minimums but I understand why there are" (R2). “For me there’s no problem really…the things that I love about it are things that could be a deterrent for people” (the uncertainty, the time factor) (R1). Yet, others noted that centralizing communication could make their daily chores easier (everything by email, etc.), and helping people with the distribution of food (have people share trucks) would allow more farmers to market to restaurants. The distributed nature of these processes can result in inefficiencies. R1 notes, “Each purveyor…every single wine company purveyor needs a credit application and every meat provider and produce…I’ve filled out at least two dozen credit applications."

R2 explained: “Every farm has a list of what is available each week, most just fax it over, some email it. Some farms are small disorganized or cuckoo or whatever, and then they just call…Or the ones who really drive me nuts just come by. Most farms you talk to on Mon or Tues for the rest of the week…Everyone has their day. Everyone is different. We talk the day before or a couple of days before. There are some farms that go away seasonally, I don’t know …over time you get a rhythm. I still make mistakes every week."

Despite these difficulties, not all restaurants were interested in centralizing components of these logistics.

R1 explained: “The obvious improvement would make it more centralized…but then you just end up with [a service like an existing distributor]. There’s something that’s nice about how sort of…disorganized it is. It’s just the way it is. The best improvement for me would be some sort of online system where you could place orders directly with farmers. They would still be handling the distribution…it’s just a way for communication…we need to centralize communication more than the distribution.”

Other distributors explained how they appreciated or may appreciate some aspects of centralized communication service, such as seeing what was available, or would be available from each farmer. That would be the best thing for me…what’s in the ground and when do you expect it and how has the weather affected the crop this year…is it going to be on time, what’s the quality like, that kind of thing” (R1).  Other restaurants expressed interest in being able to consolidate and reappropriate delivery routes. “One thing that would be awesome would be if we actually could get their food more often.” (R3).