Most retailers weighed the benefits of each interaction based on their basic needs (ex: quality of the food, distribution frequency etc.), the requirements of their customers (ex: affordability or organic etc.) and their priorities of “nice to have’s” (ex: dry farming techniques, support of a variety of farmers, etc.). Because we interviewed such a range of retailers with a variety of consumers, we found that priorities varied. For example, while R3 stated “We want to go organic, but our main thing is going local;” another retailer, R7 noted, “Nutritional foundation…that is our number one priority, to offer balanced wholesome meals and then sourcing and environmental impact, and that impact on the health of the greater community is important.” R8, a distributor, explained that she first looks to make sure her purveyor is "local," then examines what packaging is used, then looks at the pricing per lb, and then considers the size of the farm. Each of these elements is weighed according to the specific circumstance of the farm, in a qualitative fashion. Although most retailers made commitments to the people behind the food and the practices that those people implement, one commitment would not always trump the other.

During interviews different retailers each explored unique avenues of their criteria. Some mentioned their distrust in certification and their willingness to believe a producer who they trusted. R1 said: “First is quality and taste. I mean organic is definitely a plus but I know that a lot of the farms I am working with are beyond organic and a lot of them don’t get certified since it’s so time consuming. For the eggs – that’s always…I find the eggs to be the most difficult thing, there’s so much confusion over all the different labels…the best ones are the ones you get from the farm, they are truly free range. A lot of the time the labels are misleading. I don’t follow labels as much as I follow talking to the farmers directly. The same goes for livestock and how they are raised. I know there are labels though like pastured and grass fed and free range.”

Others discussed the meaning of local. R2 said: “It [local food] supports the local economy, theoretically is greener, it will be fresher and more in season and the flavor of this land we’re on and that is what we want to be serving. For produce is really where I am the most strict about trying to get stuff. I don’t really have a mile meter—but could you drive there and back in a day? But there are other things you just can’t get locally.”

Still others discussed how they were willing to support local economies (craft industries) in other areas of the world to get the best Parmesan cheese or olive oil. However, some retailers were not. R5 explained her philosophy: “I vote with my dollars that way…I am not interested in factory organic, Australian organic. We are so interested in our local organic farms and we’re so lucky here.” Everyone had a reason for their decision, like R18 who said, "You buy whatever you can, as close to home as you can, as much of the time as you can. Then you run into problems about servicing your customers, and if your customer wants blueberries from Chile in the wintertime than who am I to tell them that's wrong?”

Sometimes their decision depended on the type of food, R2 explained: “Meat is far more complicated than produce. There are grazing animals and not grazing animals, and in CA we have a lot of grassland…and here that is easy for us to do. But pork, that is a whole other issue, because pigs eat corn. (They don’t have to eat grain but you cannot support a large scale pig farm on leftover apples and carrot tops and diet makes a huge difference in the quality of the meat in the end.) Eight times the weight of the pig had to come here or we can just ship the pig here. Out there, that is what those folks do in the Midwest…just like that grandma who knows how to make pasta [in Italy]. They have an entire infrastructure set up; nothing goes to waste. There is a company that turns intestines into sausages etc. No part of that animal goes to waste…that is another part of respecting your food. In California we don’t have that infrastructure. To go to slaughter we/they have to travel three hours up the coast- and there is no person to turn the hide into something and make lard etc…”

 Most had a plethora of reasons for each choice. On sourcing locally, retailers noted that despite the difficulties of sourcing locally, they enjoyed the experience. “It challenges you to cook it and use it in a different way. It makes it interesting, that’s kind of the beauty of working with fresh produce, it’s different every day…probably more dramatically than meat or fish, it really varies a lot as the weeks go on” (R2). Others mentioned how they enjoyed sourcing locally, because daily variety and seasonal cooking kept the chefs entertained. “There's a certain amount of nerve that it takes to put something on the menu when it hasn't arrived yet” “that's part of what I get paid for…being able to figure out what we should do” (R9).

A few retailers mentioned that they disliked wasting food or packaging. "I like to buy products that are not in plastic bags" (R8). "It is really satisfying when we're actually using up what we're ordering... it doesn't feel good when you go to all this work to get these fresh ingredients and then they languish in the walk-in" (R4).  "Just to like be in balance and not create more waste…the less we use the less that people have to make…we want to be organic and biodynamic and not just use it up to use it up” (R8).

We found that, as R2 stated, there is "No 100% black and white answer" to what people passionate about food are willing to use, whether as "quality cheese" or "local produce." Instead the decision system distributors and chefs use to choose what to use involves a series of priorities, tradeoffs, and an intimate understanding of the issues surrounding that specific type of food and the circumstance of the producer who provided it.