By Sarah Wood
October 2, 2018 – As it completes a major reconstruction and prepares to do more onsite organic product incubation at its beloved Carmel Valley organic café, grocer and event space, Earthbound Farm has named a new Farm Stand general manager with diverse food industry experience—including packaged salad creation—and brought back as a consultant its former long-time chef.
Andrew McClelland joined the Farm Stand from Dole on September 21st, the same day that Jonathan Bagley, the farm stand manager who saw the 25-year-old operation through its second major renovation and reopening, departed.
Meantime, Sarah LaCasse, the Farm Stand’s former long-time executive chef, has returned as consulting executive chef.
The changes come as some customers have been wowed by a stellar new coffee program and a brightened, airy new interior (see more here), but others have been nostalgic for faster lines and anxious for more of their favorite baked goods and other long-time house-made products.
Top on McClelland’s list is attending to the farm stand’s loyal local customers.
“We’re making every effort to bring the favorites back,” says the earnest and affable McClelland, referring to the organic café’s popular granola, salad dressings and ginger snaps and other cookies, which LaCasse and her team are gradually adding back as she is able to hire the additional staff needed to prepare them. (Note to job hunters: after being closed for eight months and then reopening September 8thinto a job seeker’s market, Earthbound as of this writing still had openings for bakers, line cooks, dishwashers and café staff.)
And as soon as it has the staff, the café will add full bistro breakfast and lunch service to the made-to-order 
smoothies that augment the grab-and-go salad bar, soups and sandwiches.
McClelland is also putting into place a plan to “vastly improve” the checkout experience with an entirely new point-of-sale system and more scales for weighing salads and other foods, allowing customers to be on their way or seating themselves at the outdoor café tables more quickly.
And then there are the odds and ends still to complete in the reconstruction, which started with an essential replacement of an unsafe foundation for the 100-year-old building in January. (See story here.) Arriving this week are new windows at the front and French doors opening to the outdoor seating area and pavilion. An expanded salad bar is in the works.
So what was McClelland’s preparation for this baptism by fire?
The Toronto native started early. His first experience of selling bagged greens was at age 10 or 11, in the mid-1970s, for a business his father called Clear Lake Gardens. McClelland’s job was to run Zip-Locked bags of salad greens grown at his family’s lakeside vacation cottage in Peterborough, Ontario, to a marina for sale to other cottagers on the lake. Perhaps the world’s first bagged salad?
Fast forward several decades past a couple of childhood food businesses of McClelland’s own creation (gingerbread houses and chocolate truffles, respectively), jobs cooking in and managing restaurants, a business degree, managing fresh foods for a major grocery chain, and finally, a shift into food product development that led him, he says, to develop the first choppedpackage salad kits for Taylor Farms (Earthbound lays claim to the first non-chopped commercially packaged salad) and stints directing innovations at Dole Fresh Vegetables/Dole Berry Company and running his own market research consulting firm.
For this latest chapter at Earthbound, a certified B Corporation (meaning it adheres to strict social and environmental requirements) now operated out of San Juan Bautista and owned by the French Danone, McClelland is excited by the opportunity to help fulfill the mission set 34 years ago by Earthbound founders Myra and Drew Goodman just a short distance from where the Farm Stand sits now: to protect the environment and promote good heath by growing organic food and making it more accessible to consumers.
At present, McClelland notes, consumers have a particular desire for convenience, and at the Farm Stand, customers will get a chance to be a part of the research and development process for time-saving new offerings, voting with their forks as they test new organic products offered at the salad bar.
“Our job is to make organic easy,” McClelland says.
But mostly, the aim at the Farm Stand is to provide customers with an expanded and enhanced version of what they’ve always appreciated about it.
Janna Jo Williams, the Farm Stand’s 20-year resident farmer and event thrower, has events planned for every weekend in October, kicking off with a flower walk this Saturday, October 6th. The next two weeks will be Fall Fun, with many of the Farm Stand’s well-loved fall activities (think bountiful organic pumpkins grown onsite!) and on the 27th, a kids’ Halloween costume show, complete with a hay-bale catwalk. Wreath-making and other seasonal events to follow.
And LaCasse is getting ready to offer special Thanksgiving and Christmas meals to take home.
“We are a brand with a tremendous amount of heritage here, McClelland says. “My team is working on getting the place to where people love it even more than before.”
Before you go: The intent is for Earthbound Farm’s Farm Stand to be open seven days per week by November, but as completes its staffing and renovations it will be open just Wednesday through Sunday. Hours are Wednesday to Saturday 9am–6pm and Sunday 9am–5pm.
About the author
At Edible Monterey Bay, our mission is to celebrate the local food culture of Santa Cruz, San Benito and Monterey Counties, season by season. We believe in sustainability, and we believe everyone has a right to healthful, clean and affordable food. We think knowing where our food comes from is powerful, and we hope our magazine, website and newsletters inspire readers to get to know and support our local growers, fishers, chefs, vintners and food artisans.
