Boy, I hope this trend gets bigger...
Chipotle Mexican Grill announced this week that its stores will begin buying 25 percent of at least one of its produce items for each of its 730-plus restaurants from small and mid-sized local farms. That may not seem like much... 25 percent of one item. But it's a start. And consider that Chipotle had revenues of $1.09 billion last year.
Re: Chains buying local...
Chipotle has really been out front in this area for a while. They've done this with meat from California's Niman Ranch and Virginia's Polyface Farm. See these links:
http://www.cattlenetwork.com/content.asp?contentid=188207
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/25/AR2008032500813.html
--Steve