Tender Greens, a rapidly-growing “slow food done fast” restaurant chain that serves affordable, sustainable, delicious meals across southern California will serve as the lunch sponsor at the upcoming Seedstock Sustainable Agriculture Innovation Conference on October 24, 2012 at UCLA Anderson School of Management.
The foundational concept of Tender Greens is high-quality ingredients produced locally. The majority of the restaurant’s produce is “fresh picked daily” from Tender Green’s partner, Oxnard’s Scarborough Farms, and the rest comes from small local farmers and ranchers. The meat is all sustainably raised; the beef comes from grain-fed, hormone/antibiotic free cows, the chicken is free-range and hormone free and the tuna is line caught from the Pacific. The restaurant also partners with artisans and boutique wineries, breweries and coffee roasters.
“Tender Greens was a reaction to the lack of really good affordable causal options in Santa Monica,” says co-founder Erik Oberholtzer. “We wanted to create a place that spoke to our products and culinary sensibilities but wasn’t as expensive as the places we had all worked previously. We also wanted to create a brand that resonated with people and that redefined the quick casual space.”
Oberholtzer will also be participating on a panel on sustainable sourcing at the conference.
