At the Iowa Farm Table Podcast · From the Iowa Food System Coalition

Iowa Restaurants, Broadliners, and Meh Food

·12 min·1 clip

Austin Frerich reveals how Cisco's supply chains benefit from slave labor in seafood, and how the system's 'enshitification' leads to bland, identical meals across Iowa despite its rich farmland.

This episode investigates why most Iowa restaurants serve bland, homogenized food from national distributors instead of locally sourced ingredients. It traces the rise of 'broadliner' companies like Cisco, exposes their problematic supply chains, and highlights a chef who bucks the trend by sourcing over 90% of his food from Iowa farmers.

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