ABOUT US
Wild at Heart
“We’re wild about foraging nourishing, world-changing foods.”
Our Story
Living outdoors has always been part of our lives. Travelling the world, we spent many years picking fruit and gathering wild food. Our shared desire for constant learning keeps us growing, improving, and inspired. When we finally settled in Canada in 2012, we soon became familiar with Canada’s rich diversity of mushrooms and other wild foods. Combined with learning that many Canadians aren’t aware of the beauty and bounty of native wild foods that surround them, we were compelled to create Forest for Dinner.
In 2020, Forest for Dinner joined Vancouver Island’s modern food processing hub, the Dock +, right on the waterfront in the heart of Port Alberni. Our goal is to process and package small-batch wild-harvested mushrooms, greens, berries, and spices and create amazingly high-quality fresh, frozen, and preserved market-ready products.
Mission & Vision
At Forest for Dinner, we believe that the delicate and unique wild foods that grow in the vast wildernesses of Vancouver Island deserve to be experienced and tasted by more people.
“We’re on a mission to make wild foods more accessible”
Our vision is to help people reconnect with the bountiful nature surrounding them and improve their food sovereignty. Through education, experience, and flavours, we seek to transmit our passion for foraging and eating wild food.
Sustainability commitment
Forest for Dinner is proactive in finding ways to help make the world a more respectful and caring place—that includes the ways we run our business and create products. We’re always on the lookout to improve our practices and minimize our impact on the land. We harvest in season and are careful to forage only the wild edible species we can sustainably collect. Following strict harvesting protocol, we deeply respect the land and its inhabitants.
“We treat forests, people, and the planet with kindness and respect”
Here’s a link to read more about Forest for Dinner‘s sustainable practices.
Our Core Values
High Quality + Hard Work
High quality is our signature. We carefully select only the very best wild foods and work hard to deliver the perfect products, each and every time.
Ethical + Trustworthy
Our ultimate aim is to be fair, loyal, and respectful toward our clients, our partners, and above all, the natural world.
Authenticity + Enthusiasm
We’re a small business working with local products. Being authentic and transparent is more than just words—we live it every day. We want to share our knowledge about plants and foraging with future generations.
Our Team
After completing my master’s degree in agroforestry, I focused on wild edible food and Western Canada’s wild edible mushrooms in particular. Combined with a passion for cooking, I created my dream job with Forest for Dinner. We hope you love eating the delicacies we find in the forest as much as we enjoy picking them!”
With my bachelor’s degree in business administration in Quebec, I soon understood that business could be carried out in many ways. Forest for Dinner is a perfect combination of my love of nature, the Canadian wilderness, and my desire to run my own business. Now my office is in the wild, and my work feels in line with my values of preserving the ecosystem, educating people about ways we can do that, and transmitting food knowledge to future generations.”
If you’re interested in working and collaborating with us, please get in touch!