Rosemary Pete closes his farm stand

Pete Vinci, who became a fixture on Charlotte’s local-food scene selling rosemary he clipped from his parents’ yard and went on to sell produce at farmers’ markets and to restaurants, announced Tuesday on Facebook that he will close his stand at the Charlotte Regional Farmers’ Market on Feb. 25.

He plans to continue to operate his lemonade stand at the market and may sometimes sell mountain produce there, but Vinci said he’s changing to a business model in which he sells produce only to stores, not to restaurants or consumers.

“It essentially can run itself,” he told The Observer. “Growing stuff all day and being at the farmers’ market, there’s not much time to do a lot of things.”

However, questions about the source of Vinci’s produce have arisen in the past year. Vinci and the Cotswold Farmers Market, which started last summer, parted ways when he refused to allow market manager Mike Walker to inspect his land. Walker wanted to confirm Vinci was selling what he was growing himself, and that the land was within 100 miles of Charlotte. (Both are typical rules at grower-only markets.)

Vinci says the market approached him about selling there and he told them that he used land in Asheville, outside the 100-mile radius.

Walker disputes that. He says Vinci approached the market and said he was using land near Harrisburg, within 100 miles.

“When we asked to go see his farms, he said no. I asked, ‘Why not?’ All our other vendors had. He said he leased land from farmers locally and the farmers did not want anyone on their property. So I gave him two weeks’ notice. I said, ‘Pete, I’m sorry.’ ”

Walker says that he was bothered not just by Vinci’s refusal to allow a farm inspection, but also by things he sold that seemed very far from locally grown.

“Where do you get Mission figs from?” he said. “I don’t know anyone in the area growing Mission figs. As soon as I saw him selling that, I thought, ‘You know what? He’s blatantly not following the rules.’ ”

Walker said the decision hurt his fledgling market, because Vinci had brought such a wide variety of produce. But he said most shoppers understood.

“Most of our customers realized he was outside the rules.”

Eight years ago, in the early days of Rosemary Pete, Vinci was a 20-year-old man who was popular with local chefs and farmers. He was known for his eagerness about local produce and building a local-food economy, and for his entrepreneurial spirit, honed in marketing classes at Johnson & Wales University.

In recent years, Vinci, now 28, has refused to allow journalists and market managers to inspect his land, and has dismissed questions about where and how he gets his produce. In a Charlotte Magazine article last summer, Vinci was quoted as saying: “There’re all kinds of rumors. I don’t know who started the damn rumors. Pain in the ass.”

Vinci said Tuesday that his decision to leave the market had nothing to do with the negative publicity.

“It actually was pretty good,” he said. “It got my name out there. I haven’t heard anything bad about it.” While he said at one point Tuesday that he grows everything himself, later in the conversation he said he has people running farms for him. He also works as a sous chef in the food-service program at Belmont Abbey in Gaston County and is raising three children with his fiance. They are planning to have more children, he says, and he wants more time with them than a full-time farm and market operate would allow.

While he wouldn’t say which stores will carry his produce, he said he has allowed a farm inspection by one buyer.

The many requests to see his land aren’t unreasonable, he said: “I just don’t want anyone out there.”

This story was originally published January 31, 2017 at 2:06 PM with the headline "Rosemary Pete closes his farm stand."