“It’s an exciting moment for chefs and restaurants.”

In opening San Antonio’s newest grocery, Pullman Market at Pearl, Kevin Fink hopes to combat what he calls a race-to-the-bottom mentality in the food and beverage industry.

He describes a mindset that leads restaurateurs and grocers to choose the cheapest options for produce, meat and other goods without giving much thought to their quality or where they came from. Pullman will stick with local farmers even if their prices swing above those of competitors, he said. The market, which opened last month, offers goods from more than 150 suppliers throughout Texas.

“We believe in trying to keep it in a space where we ride the ups and the downs with people so they can build their business and get better,” said Fink, a partner with Emmer & Rye Hospitality Group, the Austin-based company that worked with Potluck Hospitality, an arm of Pearl developer Silver Ventures, to open the market. “Imagine if every workplace, when you had a down day they switched you out with somebody else. That’s what happens in food all the time.”

The market is pricier than your neighborhood H-E-B.

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“We price match ourselves against a Central Market or a Whole Foods for all our grocery section, with the exception of our prepared items, some of our local items,” he said.

The 40,000-square-foot market, in the former Samuels Glass Co. headquarters at Pearl, features a butcher, a sourdough bakery, a grab-and-go meal case and five quick-service eateries serving burgers, sandwiches, ceviche, ice cream and coffee. It now has two restaurants: Fife & Farro, a pizza and pasta joint; and Mezquite, serving Mexican cuisine, with a mezcal bar. Two more, named Isidore and Nicosi, are set to open in coming months.

Emmer & Rye is best known in San Antonio for operating Ladino, a Mediterranean restaurant, and Henbit, a burger counter, at Pearl. It has several restaurants in Austin, including its namesake Emmer & Rye in the Rainey Street district.

Fink, who grew up in Tucson, Ariz., and studied hospitality at Cornell University and Northern Arizona University, recently sat with the Express-News to discuss the inspiration behind Pullman, his path into the food and beverage industry and the difficulties of sourcing from local farmers. The following has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Q: What is it like working with the folks at Potluck Hospitality and Silver Ventures? Have you always seen eye to eye?

A: I don’t think it’s possible on a project of this scale to only see eye to eye with people. What I will say is it’s always been a scenario where we’re able to talk through things. In business, that’s incredibly important. The entire team — but definitely Bryant Ambelang, the CEO — have been really great at working through problems with us, giving us vision, making sure that we always have accessibility. But always seeing eye to eye is just not how it is, nor would we want that because I think that means that somebody is not speaking genuinely. And that’s when the good ideas flow.

Q: Could you offer examples of when they had an idea that was different from yours, and how you met in between?

A: The name is a good example. The naming process went on for six months or so because we had a name that we liked that they didn’t like; they had some names that they liked that we didn’t like. Ultimately, we kept going back and forth until we finally found one that we both were really happy with. It had to have significance to Pearl and San Antonio and also to food and also to, you know, sounding right. The benefit of that was, it’s honestly a name that’s better than any of the names either side came up with.

Q: Do you live in Austin?

A: I live in both cities. Right now, I’m in King William. I moved here for the project. My family still lives in Austin, is the only downside, so I drive back. They’ll be out for the summer, though.

Q: How did you end up in the culinary industry?

A: When I was 11 years old, my dad walked in the backyard and he goes, “So we just bought a hotel.” I was very confused. He ended up being a sweat-equity partner. He ran it as the general manager, and that’s how he got into ownership — this little 30-room guest ranch resort. And I helped dig the city sewer line to connect it. I was the landscaper at, like, 12, and then at 14, they opened a restaurant and I was the dishwasher. I worked in restaurants all the way throughout high school, and when it came to college time, I was so enamored with all of the facets of hospitality that I wanted to make it a career.

Q: How did you become interested in locally grown food?

A: Tucson is an incredibly special space for food, but it is not food that is traditional to America, right? Things that grow there are not the same staple products that we’re used to having. So I started to dedicate my life to understanding what grew there the best and why, and that got me friends with a lot of really talented farmers.

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Once you try (locally grown versus nonlocal foods) side by side, it’s really hard to go back. That’s what we try and do at Emmer & Rye and Pullman. We make the decision to buy locally, because we do believe that if you’re going to switch up on your farmer when the price gets 15 cents cheaper (from a large company), then you’re going to make them really frail.

Q: This is the first market you’ve developed, right?

A: This came from COVID. What we found is that the availability for quality produce and meat from small farms in restaurants is really present. Well, when I went out as a consumer, even great groceries didn’t have that. I started to ask why. There’s a tremendous amount of logistics and performative systems that have happened that answer those “why’s.” It is much harder to get something from 150 different small vendors. But that doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing. For us, once I recognized that the quality difference was so tremendous, I really dove into trying to solve the problem. Because I do believe that if consumers have the option of buying something that is better sourced, tastes better and is better for them, they’re going to make that decision, even if the product’s 10% or 15% more expensive. And oftentimes it’s not more; oftentimes it’s the exact same price. It’s just that it’s so much harder on the supplier end to go through.

Q: How did you work through those distribution challenges? And how did you find the producers?

A: We worked with a lot of them already. If you think about Emmer & Rye, if you think about Ladino, that’s already our mantra. We’ve been growing this for three-plus years, right? The central store has a good amount of local, and we’ll only continue to grow that. Now, (a farmer knows), “Hey, if I make this beautiful local gem and I show it to Pullman, they may pick me up when I’m small. Then eventually I can get into something like a Central Market or an H-E-B”  — because there’s a conduit for scale here that we’re a really good in-between for. I do know in talking to H-E-B and Central Market that they really want to work with local as well, but you have to be at a certain level to get there.

Q: What about affordability? Can the average San Antonian afford to shop at Pullman?

A: That is of course the goal for us. You know, we will never be able to be like an H-E-B in pricing, for a lot of different reasons.

Does that mean that for everybody we’re an everyday shop? No, but it does mean that we should be able to be a space where you can walk in and find something really affordable. We have an amazing ham sandwich at $7.99, and it is huge, and it is really delicious. It’s all Berkshire ham. It’s a potato milk bread bun that we make. It is aioli that we make, and it is a mustard that we make, with some really good cheese and local lettuce.

Q: Could you offer examples of where you source your food?

A: Within 100 miles, small, local is our goal. That’s the sweet spot where we go to great lengths to support those people. We get stuff all the way down in the (Rio Grande) Valley, all the way up on the Panhandle and the Oklahoma border, all the way west as well. With beef, we know exact ranches and where they’re from; they’re all Central Texas ranches. Same thing with wheat.

Seafood is never going to be within 100 miles, right? That’s one that we give ourselves some grace on. It’s even hard to talk about, like, are you really getting into which dock it’s landing in? Is fish from the Louisiana dock different fish from the Texas dock? Well, in some ways it is, because of where it’s landing and where that money’s going in, and some ways it’s not. Getting into those conversations, you learn a lot. We have two chefs, and then our retail team and then myself that are really into this.

Q: How is the local farming sector doing? Can you find the stuff you want, generally?

A: We are a supply-based company, as opposed to demand-based. What I mean by that is we typically ask our partners, “What do you grow best?” As opposed to saying, “Grow this for us.” The difference for that is the person that is intimate with that land knows what’s the best.

That doesn’t mean that we don’t ask for certain things, but it’s a very different model. In doing it that way, I think we get a tremendous amount of surprise with things that we never knew were going to be really amazing, like Toothache berries. It’s this thing that grows all around, that one of our farmers grows, and it actually has a numbing effect to it and Native Americans used to chew on it. You’re never going to call that out if you’re not listening to what’s happening — there’s not a market for Toothache berries. What we’re here to do is help create markets for things that are inherent from Texas that our ground’s telling us it wants to grow. Same thing with like all this beautiful mesquite. We get to eat what our state is really producing.