Foodzie will be an online marketplace where you can discover and buy food directly from artisan producers. So we often get asked the question, “Well what exactly is an artisan producer?” I usually have my own answer, but recently I had a conversation with Mark Pastore, owner of Incanto (one of San Francisco’s best Italian restaurants) and Boccalone, an artisan Salumi producer. I loved his explanation of what an artisan producer is and what it means to buy their products, so I thought I would share.

I think artisan food should be about two fundamental things:




1) First and foremost, high-quality, delicious, handcrafted food that
carries with it its own particular perspective about what it is. To
somewhat oversimplify things, foods that carry these attributes are
generally made from extremely high-quality ingredients, in small batches,
with a great deal of personal attention from skilled artisans. All of
this usually means that these foods cost much more to make than the
“comparable” industrially produced foodstuff.




2) Connecting consumers with their food. Where it comes from, who makes
it, how it is connected to the world at large.