It can take up to a week and 1,200 miles of travel for the average store-bought tomato to go from a commercial farm to a dinner table in Pittsburgh.

The journey takes a toll on taste because the tomatoes are grown with thicker skin and picked unripe to withstand travel.

The Progress Fund aims to change this with the Produce Grown Here project-- or PGH project -- bringing locally grown produce to restaurants and grocery stores in Pittsburgh.

The project will help local farmers deliver the produce by connecting them with buyers and reduce costs by joining with other farmers to streamline operations.

The creation of the project is being announced today.

"We get a fresher product, a more wholesome product," said David A. Kahley, president and chief executive officer of the nonprofit Progress Fund. "It makes for a stronger system for them because [farmers are] closer to their customer."

Local produce is also "immune from national scares," he said, pointing out that local tomatoes were safe when tomatoes from some commercial farms in Texas and Mexico were found to have caused a salmonella outbreak last week.

The PGH project will focus first on Giant Eagle and Eat'n Park Hospitality Group, helping them to expand their existing local buying operations by connecting more local farmers with the two companies.

Because the local farming economy is fragmented -- there are 17,000 family farms in Western Pennsylvania alone -- many farms are too small to fill the needs of large companies like Eat'n Park, whose restaurants can go through 35,000 pounds of tomatoes a week.

Supplies are less dependable because the growing season is short in Western Pennsylvania. And sometimes, local farmers are not producing the goods that restaurants and grocery stores want.

"There's obviously some missing links," said David Eson, the project's director. "Transportation is lacking in the region for people to get product to market."

The PGH project hopes to overcome these barriers by aggregating product from several farmers to fill orders and helping them consolidate packing and processing facilities to reduce costs, said Mr. Eson. Small farms could also share freight services.

The project also plans to build a network of farmers to create a larger and more reliable supply of produce.

At the other end, the project will help Giant Eagle and Eat'n Park with marketing the products and using them to draw customers.

The program may be the first of its kind, Mr. Eson said.

"It's unique that there's a nonprofit that's kind of acting as a play-maker," he said. "The Progress Fund has positioned itself ... to be the nexus of all the information."

About 15 percent of the food served at Eat'n Park restaurants is bought locally. Beyond produce, they purchase pork and dairy products locally.

The company started buying locally about six years ago, in part to help the local farming economy but mostly because they were getting better product, said Brooks Broadhurst, a senior vice president with Eat'n Park.

"Mainly we were looking for higher quality foods," he said. "Products that are produced locally ... are not grown to be shipped long-distance."

In the long run, because of the cost of shipping cross-country, local products can be cheaper even though they are more expensive to produce.

"It's a revenue neutral type proposition, but we end up getting better quality products," he said.