After buying a small, local, landmark restaurant, Steamers, in Gainesville, FL, I found the Indonesian food, tempeh, already on our menu. Our local tempeh maker would come by every so often, and I with great joy, would purchase some of his artisan tempeh.
I noticed that the texture and flavor of tempeh was very acceptable to many different people and their varying diets. Not only vegans and vegetarians, but many meat eaters enjoyed our tempeh dishes. We even offered tempeh served with certain meats. This is more traditional in Indonesian cuisine. I found tempeh to be a unique food that helped put our restaurant on the local’s food map. As a self-described, ecologically concerned citizen, it appeared that the pollution and energy used to produce animal proteins was far greater than creating our natural vegetable protein. It occurred to me that our restaurant's meat eaters would consume less meat if the alternative was truly more meat like and, more importantly, all natural. I could see a need for tempeh in every restaurant concept in the country.
So began my development of a commercial, food industry capable tempeh shop. One that wouldn’t sacrifice the time-honored, Indonesian, agrarian methods of making tempeh, but still create the volume capable to serve a much wider audience of consumers. In the past, most tempeh shops had catered to vegetarians. Our shop would try to leave no one out of this food revolution. Tempeh could be the healthy, tasty, food alternative that so many Americans have wanted for years. Maybe a little less of the ecologically and nutritionally controversial meat industry would do our planet and bodies some good.
For the past six years, at our family tempeh shop in Gainesville, FL, my father and I produce the finest, consistently firm, aromatically pleasing, dense tempeh. This tempeh is more similar to the original Indonesian product than the commonly available commercial tempeh. We do not pasteurize our tempeh. So when you use Arties Tempeh, you’re buying a living food.
Arties Tempeh distributes its product daily throughout North Central Florida. This is the only way that we can insure the highest quality product and support to the restaurants and food providers. We are happy to be Florida’s first licensed tempeh shop and Florida’s only full-service industry professional tempeh shop.
Our retail product...
I very much dislike packaging - one time use and throw away. We use label inserts for minimal packaging. At Arties tempeh, as little packaging as necessary is our style, and promise. You can find our one-pound retail offering in the fresh-frozen section at select natural food stores in North-Central Florida.
About Gainesville, Florida
Local Foods
Our local farmer to table efforts are widely supported by restaurants and grocers alike. Several farmer's markets are operated year round throughout our town. Many community gardens can be found throughout Gainesville as well as Farm-to-Family projects and CSA's. Gainesville is hip to eating seasonal, local foods.
Our Beans
We buy only organic soybeans from one of the oldest farmer co-ops in the country (EST. 1953!). Nice people and great beans make excellent Tempeh.
Artie's Tempeh is made with some of the best water in the country!
For example...
Boulware Spring is a 4th magnitude spring that issues from a pipe in a semicircular brick wall in the side of the hill west of the old water treatment plant. Water flows south into concrete retaining pools and then to a small stream to Paynes Prairie. Boulware Spring is located on the site of the original public water plant for Gainesville. Now a city park, the water plant building has been turned into a small museum with conference room facilities. The park also serves as the western trailhead to the Gainesville to Hawthorne Rail Trail. Maybe the last great water source of Florida lies beneath our northern counties. The City of Gainesville, and our tempeh shop truly benefit from such a bountiful reasource.