New St. Pete Florida restaurant thrives with local urban farms
Shopping local beats supply chain shortages
By: Stassy Olmos
ABC Action News
Mar 29, 2022
Excerpt:
Sol Bistro works with a handful of urban farms and local purveyors from Gainsville to Tampa.
“We guarantee that our stuff’s staying in the community… we’re not to the highest bidder to ship it out of state. There’s not trucking issues, big supply chain issues. If you want to come get it, just stop on by,” said Travis Malloy, co-owner of Meacham Urban Farm in Downtown Tampa.
It’s a two-acre farm tucked between city apartment buildings and I-275.
“We don’t spray anything so especially on a new site, you know, there could be an outbreak of a certain insect or a certain pest,” explained Meacham Urban Farm Co-Owner Joe Dalessio. “You deal with a lot more of those issues in the first couple years and then they kind of settle themselves out as the entire ecosystem gets built.”
Other farms like 15th Street Farm in Downtown St. Petersburg have been around for more than a decade.
“There is a lot of vitality in the plants here…and it is entirely due to the microorganisms that we cultivate in the soil,” said Emmanuel Roux, founder of Urban Food Park which owns the farm.
