“There’s more attention now on shopping close to home”: How Broadfork Produce is connecting Toronto’s top chefs with Ontario farmers

I didn’t grow up on a farm, but I’ve always been interested in food networks. The way ingredients move from land to plate reveals a lot about our systems, values and communities. As a kid, I cooked at home to relax. As a young adult, I studied culinary arts at George Brown, thinking I’d become a chef. I worked at Il Fornello near the Harbourfront and in private catering, but I left the industry around 2013 to run a construction company. That had me spending most of my time in Ontario’s cottage country.

While renovating a cottage on Georgian Bay in 2016, I met Colin Dobell, an environmentalist who passed away last year. He became a friend, a mentor and one of the main reasons I’m so passionate about agriculture today. Colin was the executive director at the Ontario Water Centre, a non-profit hub that helped young people connect to nature, with a goal of fostering sustainability. He hired me for building work around his property, but the more I talked with him, the more I realized that I was less interested in construction and more interested in community building, ecological sustainability and social enterprise. Colin needed help with OWC’s start-up project ClearWater Farm, and he encouraged me to work with him on it. I farmed with ClearWater for three years, then spent another five years building a CSA offering, a presence at farmers’ markets, and community partnerships like the York Region Food Network. I also helped create a training program for young farmers.

During the winters, I toured farms across Canada and around the world, talking to growers and community food leaders to better understand food systems and how we can improve them. Initially, I set out to connect chefs with growers, but I also began researching how to make fresh, organic food more accessible to the public. I realized that the problem isn’t growing enough food; it’s getting it into people’s hands. Rural communities often have the land and the growers but not the population to support direct sales, while urban centres have the demand but no direct connection to the farms. And distribution, logistics, sales and marketing usually fall to the farmers themselves, who are too busy to take on additional roles.

We needed more connective tissue. In December, I launched Broadfork Produce—which I like to say is a grower-led, chef-focused distribution company—as a bridge between farmers and restaurants. Our mission is relatively simple: we want to create a food system that works for growers and consumers alike. Broadfork is based in Toronto’s west end, just south of Bloor and Lansdowne. Twice a week, we pick up produce from farmers and growers, and we assist with crop planning in the winter. Today, we work with about 25 growers in a horseshoe radius from Niagara to Bruce County to the Durham region. We’re proud to work with all kinds of producers, from solo operations to larger organic farms.

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On the restaurant side, we sit down with chefs to look at their menus and suggest ways they could incorporate upcoming seasonal ingredients. We also get input from them about what they’d like to see more of, so the farmers can have an idea of what’s in demand. When I was at ClearWater, chef Jeff Bovis from Wynona asked about two super-rare heirloom tomato varieties called Barry’s Crazy Cherry and Purple Bumble Bee. We were able to source the seeds from the West Coast, grow the tomatoes here and allow Toronto diners to enjoy a type of tomato they might never have had the chance to otherwise. That was one of the first moments where I saw the full cycle—seed to harvest to restaurant—and knew I could build more reciprocal flow between growers and chefs in Ontario.

I’ve become a close observer of the latest produce trends. Right now, forced rhubarb—a sweeter, paler type of rhubarb that’s grown in near darkness—from Lennox Farms has been popular with chefs, along with flowering kale and baby leeks. Torontonians will see these ingredients on plates at the Wood Owl, Lake Inez, 20 Victoria, Casa Paco, CKB and Burdock. Our work with restaurants that have weekly specials and menus that change often makes it all possible.

While we’re rooted in Ontario, we also import a small amount of specialty items when we’re limited by the season. After all, there’s a lot of amazing produce out there. It’s not so much about replacing local food as it is about complementing it—if we can’t grow it here but can find growers who align with our approach to the land, then it makes sense for me to bring it in. On top of making interesting, ethically produced foods accessible, I try to consider how other farmers, who have grown these varieties for generations, can provide valuable information for us.

Our latest exciting development is a 600-square-foot retail space that we’re building out of our warehouse on St. Helen’s Avenue, in the west end. It’ll be intimate, like a tucked-away farm stand, but with the convenience of being in the city. We’ve designed it to feel welcoming and included windows that look into our warehouse so visitors can see us processing orders for chefs—that transparency felt symbolic of Broadfork’s ethos of supply chain visibility.

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When I first started farming eight years ago, I’d drive up to ClearWater on Sundays, then back to the city on Thursday afternoons to host a farmers’ market pop-up and CSA pick-up at Rooster Coffee on Broadview. My friends, family and neighbours would all come out, so it was a beautiful collision of my city and farm lives. The shop feels like a continuation of that and a way for Broadfork to offer the public the same access chefs have to our goods.

We’ll be selling produce, of course, but also pantry items, eggs, dairy products, pickles, preserves and, for the first time, meat. We’ve partnered with Greenock Food Collective, a high-quality farm-to-table butcher in Bruce County. I’m looking forward to sharing his story around the shop as well as tales of other unique producers like White Lily Farms, Sunny Nature Farm, Ohme Farms and Miller’s Dairy. We’ll also be offering spring seedlings in May, in conjunction with Fiddle Foot Farm. It’s the first chance I’ll have to help people kick-start their own gardens, which feels particularly special to me.

Folks who gravitate toward Broadfork tend to already be curious about where their food comes from, but the recent US tariffs have given those conversations a sense of urgency. There’s more attention now on shopping close to home, and that’s powerful to me. Our small, passionate team can’t wait to officially launch the retail shop in May and get into our full-time hours in June, so we can keep sharing all the locally grown and made goodness. Everyone has opinions about food, so being able to have drop-in visitors share what’s important to them is also part of my hope for this space. Plus, with sprouts popping up now, the timing for our opening couldn’t be better. Farmers are excited, and it’s palpable. It feels like the first long stretch after a deep winter sleep—we’re awake and ready.