2015 – Volume #39, Issue #1, Page #08
 |
|
Could crickets be coming to a grocery store near you? Maybe, says Kevin Bachhuber, owner of Big Cricket Farms in Youngstown, Ohio. While most of the producers who raise crickets sell them for bait and animal feed, Bachhuber raises crickets for human food.
With a flavor somewhere between cashews and corn, his food-grade crickets are sold to protein powder processors and restaurants. Bachhuber hopes to sell them whole to be eaten like the dry roasted crickets he ate during a month-long stay in Thailand in 2006. There they are served like pretzels at beachfront bars.
“I got used to it being in my diet very quickly,” he says. Back in the states, the Wisconsin native realized no one in the U.S. was growing crickets for food, but there was demand for it in protein bars, with companies having to import the crickets.
In April 2014, he started his “farm” in a 5,000 sq. ft. cinder block warehouse in Youngstown, Ohio. He chose that area because of reasonable rent and availability of workers.