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Hand-line caught Fogo Island cod & seafood products from Fogo Island Fish are unparalleled in quality & freshness. Canadian fish available at 100km Foods.

For Ontario beef producer, VG Meats, ethical practices to ensure their small herd is happy & stress free is the key to yeilding this superior product.

Working so closely with farmers and producers means we have a pulse on how climate change is affecting our forests and farmland. Maple water and maple syrup production are feeling the affects of climate change.

Flow of maple sap is controlled by alternating freezing and thawing cycles in the late winter. Unexpected, early thaws are one of the ways that we can weather patterns are impacting maple syrup production.

Maple Syrup Production & The Effect of Climate Change

Research has shown that the number of sap flow days may not change as a result of climate change, but the timing of peak production will shift earlier. Therefore, it's essential for maple syrup producers to adapt to an earlier tapping season to sustain their livelihoods.

This is why buying local is so important! The more robust our local food economy is, the better farmers and producers can adapt.

Speaking of the impact of climate change on maple syrup production, this year marks the earliest that Ennis Maple has tapped trees in thirty years! The early thaw took them by surprise, and they had to tap quickly before the weather turned cold again.

It typically takes about five days to get everything ready for tapping maple trees. With unexpected thaws, the pressure is on to make sure that you don't miss the short window of opportunity.

Owner of Ennis Maple Products, Martin Ennis, is a 5^th generation maple syrup producer on the Ennis Family farm. He heads the maple syrup production operation. In fact, they're still able to tap some of the same trees that Martin’s great-grandfather was tapping during WWII!

Pictured below is his daughter Jessica, collecting and bottling the sap, an important part of the maple syrup production process.

Tapping for sap and boiling it into syrup and sugar is an intense process. It really requires all hands on deck and you need to move quickly!

From what I understand of tapping and boiling sap, timing is everything. Nothing can be left unattended even for a short time! That's how fast paced the flurry of activity is in maple syrup production!

Maple Syrup Production With Sustainability in Mind

Ennis Maple not only produces some of the best Canadian maple syrup, but they're also prioritizing sustainability in their maple syrup production methods.

Maple trees are able to heal over openings from tapping if they are done correctly. Over time, they form a clear glue/sap-like substance over the holes made from the taps. Ennis Maple makes sure to carefully tap their trees to ensure the maples can heal.

To ensure the longevity of their trees, they rotate the trees they tap every few years to relieve the older maples.

With climate change impacting maple syrup production, it is in the best interest of producers to reduce their carbon footprint.

The Ennis family also use specific production methods to ensure they have a low-carbon impact. They actually bought the first high-efficiency wood evaporator in Ontario for a mid-sized maple farm, pictured above!

This way they can use wood fuel from dead trees on their farm instead of using oil. They also have a reverse osmosis machine that removes up to 75% of the water from the sap before they boil it into syrup!

This handy machine means they only burn 25% of the wood they would use otherwise. This also means they can make up to 700L of syrup using only one cord of wood! They call this wood evaporator "The Beast" for good reason!

The grades of syrup they produce – Golden Delicate, Amber-Rich & Dark-Robust – contain the same sugar content at 66.5 brix.

Soon we’ll have a new batch of fresh Canadian maple syrup in from Ennis Maple for you to enjoy!

Sapsucker Maple Water

I remember well the first time the team at 100km Foods sampled Sapsucker organic maple tree filtered water. Paul stopped in at the warehouse office with a 1L carton and the taste was unforgettable!

We couldn't get over the fresh, smooth and delicate taste. It’s water, but it’s not just water. Our sales rep, Alicia, coined it as the “coconut water of Canada,” and that really rang true.

This 100% pure maple water has absolutely no additives or preservatives. It’s a mineral and antioxidant rich beverage that you can feel good about drinking. It's also the most sustainable packaged water on the market!

How to Enjoy Sapsucker?

Sapsucker makes a refreshing and unique drink on its own, but its uses extend far beyond that! Try it out in cocktails, desserts, and other dishes.

We all love learning about the creative ways chefs, bartenders, and mixologists are able to incorporate this quintessentially Canadian ingredient.

One example I heard of was brewing coffee with Sapsucker and then adding whiskey for a delicious drink (though perhaps save that one for the colder months!). It also makes a mean mojito!

The Lower Valley Beverage Company (whose flagship product is Sapsucker) was founded in 2014 by two families (the Chapmans and the McGlaughlins).

They were eager to return to a sustainably minded, rural way of life once they welcomed their families, and are now based in Flesherton, Ontario.

Like Ennis Maple, Sapsucker is keeping sustainability top of mind. In every facet of their operation, they strive to be as sustainable and low impact as they can be.

Unlike bottled water, Sapsucker is tapped from trees, not taken from fragile underground aquifers. Maple trees will continue to produce sap and water for up to a century once matured.

They work to get the newly tapped water into cartons within 36-48 hours to maintain freshness, and the packaging itself has a low carbon food print and made to be recyclable.

It’s also a remarkably shelf stable product lasting for 18 months before opening, and up to two weeks opened and refrigerated.

All three Sapsucker maple water flavours, lemon, lime and original, are available on 100km Foods.

Ontario milk by Sheldon Creek is minimally processed, yielding the freshest tasting milk & dairy! Learn more about Sheldon Creek & their production process.

Our aim with these farm tours is to genuinely provide the opportunity for chefs and farmers to connect to each other and put faces to names. Other opportunities include our annual Chef and Farmer Meet & Greet, but the farm tours are a hands on chance to actually see where the food we deliver to you is grown and packaged, and it is well worth attending!

Top Tomato is family owned and operated with over 55 years of experience. It all started back in 1960, when Vito De Filippis began farming cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli on 40 acres in Uxbridge, Ontario. At that point, most of the produce was sold to smaller supermarkets and down at the food terminal.

Vito’s son Dominic is now the owner and operator of Top Tomato, along with his two sons Antony and Vito. Nowadays, using patience and innovation, their farm has expanded to a much larger scale with a wider range of products including broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, tomatoes, beans, peas, and even artichokes! Growing artichokes in Ontario was a process of trial-and-error throughout the better part of a decade until they learned the best way to grow them in the Canadian climate and started to see amazing yields.

10 years ago, Top Tomato implemented a food traceability program as well as participate in yearly audits. Through these tools, they can trace every single seed they planted and use the continuous feedback through their program to make adjustments and produce even better tasting products!

More recently, they’ve worked to reduce their waste by investing in reusable, washable shipping containers. They also pride themselves on being a great local employer, and are constantly striving to provide growth and opportunities for their staff – some of whom have worked for them for over 20 years!      

Learn about the processes used at St. David's Hydroponics that work together to offset carbon use enough so that, during summertime production, their operation has a neutral carbon footprint and produce delicious, gorgeous peppers and eggplants that we deliver right to you!

Ontario Honey Creations is the sister company of Toronto Bee Rescue, both of which are family-run businesses, co-founded by Sarah Allinson-Chorabik and her husband, Peter. One of the coolest things about their product line and operation is that they dedicate a portion of all their sales towards their free honey bee swarm removal service offered by Toronto Bee Rescue! This service aims to humanely remove honey bee swarms from residential or commercial spaces and relocate them to more suitable locations.

As part of a community of chefs, farmers and foodies, we cannot emphasize enough how important initiatives such as the Toronto Bee Rescue swarm removal service are. Honey bee colonies are facing alarming collapse – Ontario alone faced a 58% winter mortality colony collapse over 2013/2014. The work Sarah and Peter do through the Toronto Bee Rescue is something we whole-heartedly support here at 100km Foods. We all need honeybees! Not only because their ecological role is crucial for pollination, but also because, well, honey is just the most delicious thing ever!

Ontario Honey Creation’s apiaries are located throughout Toronto and the GTA, and they harvest separately based on time of year in the spring, summer and fall. One of their apiaries is right in the Rouge Valley, so their products truly couldn’t be more local!

They use the honey they harvest to create artisanal honey vinegars, through a static fermentation process, which are then aged for six months before bottling. The garlic in the Honey Garlic Vinegar is also grown on their own family hobby farm.  We now carry four distinct varieties of these vinegars – the original Honey Vinegar, Honey Apple Vinegar, Honey Raspberry Vinegar and Honey Garlic Vinegar.

Paul, Grace and the office staff tried out these vinegars and we were all impressed by the flavour and deliciousness of these products that we decided right then they would be our next feature. icon on our website, or to the brand new category of honey vinegars to add them to your cart and try them out!

Thanks so much to Ontario Honey Creations, and in particular Sarah Allinson-Chorbik, for providing us with such fantastic information about their operation!

Our relationship with Hillside Gardens is a special one – they were one of the very first farms we worked with when Paul and Grace started 100km Foods back in 2008.

In fact, at first, Paul jokingly pointed out that perhaps it was more of a hassle to work with us, because we were so small! Yet Ron Gleason and the team at Hillside believed in what we were doing.

To this day they remain one of our most reliable and steadfast producers.

Hillside Gardens is a fourth generation farm located in the lush and fertile Holland Marsh, an integral part of Ontario’s Greenbelt. This region is known for its delicious, high-quality produce.

Hillside Gardens focuses primarily on root vegetables including onions, carrots, beets, and parsnips.

One of the reasons why our relationship with Hillside Gardens is so important is that we have been able to negotiate whole-season prices. This means we can offer you their produce at a steady price, insulated to a degree from the short-term volatility of the market.

We encourage you to use their products to incorporate in-season root vegetables into your menus. They're not only excellent in quality but honing in on the areas where you can buy local and feature in-season products will save you money!

Hillside Gardens is proof that it’s possible to be a large scale operation with a commitment to quality and sustainability, as evidenced by their early adoption of and accreditation by the Local Food Plus program.

This means that they work hard to use fewer pesticides on their crops, ensure water conservation and respect soil fertility, and treat their employees fairly.

Additionally, Hillside has a robust traceability program in place, which allows them to track and monitor their produce from seed to plate.

They have also worked with other farms in Ontario to implement similar traceability programs, so that more farms can improve their operations, safety standards, and quality of food, as they have.

Downey Potato Farm

What’s YOUR favourite way to cook potatoes?

Because let’s be real, there are seemingly endless ways to prepare and enjoy potatoes and I bet the majority of you reading this right now have potatoes on your menus!

They’re so ubiquitous that I think we’re all guilty of occasionally forgetting how versatile and satisfying potatoes can be. In any case, potatoes are awesome and I think we can all agree on that.

Downey Potato Farms in Shelburne, Ontario does potatoes right! This region is known for having incredibly fertile soil known as Honeywood Silt Loam, and is a longstanding farming community.

Downey’s has been in operation since 1924 and is quite a large operation. In fact, they can store up to 25 million pounds of potatoes. Yes, you read that right: 25 million pounds!

Sometimes seeing is believing, though, so here’s some visual evidence:

Trevor Downey, whose family has operated Downey farms for four generations, came on board as the president of Downey Potato Farms a few years ago following a trip to Peru.

There, Trevor spent time with growers and researched some of the tastiest heirloom potato varieties to bring back and grow in Shelburne. These varieties include Heirloom Masquerades, Heirloom Strawberry Blondes and Heirloom Sweet Cerises.

The team at Downey are passionate about growing potatoes that are both beautiful and nicely sized, but also tasty! Trevor and Josh, head of Sales & Marketing, met with some chefs at a chip event at the Drake last year and were blown away by the enthusiasm of chefs about their potatoes.

They're really looking forward to having more restaurants in Toronto and the GTA carry their varieties, and love that we are now their primary distributor to restaurants!

Most of their potato varieties are available locally year-round, and their operation employs a permanent staff of twenty-five.

The storage rooms at Downey can house 5 million pounds of potatoes each. Their washing, grading, sorting, and packing process, is also a sight to behold!

Downey Potatos at 100km Foods

Some of their most sought after potatoes are the Chef’s Russet and the Bistro's Mini. The Chef's Russet is the ultimate baking or frying potato with a light buttery flavour.

The Bistro Mini is an excellent mini spud perfect for roasting, grilling, or adding to salads.

All of their potatoes are GMO free and their facility is GAP certified, and they also have a line of certified organic potatoes!

Try some now at 100km Foods!

Located in Norfolk County, Pristine Gourmet is owned by Jason Persall, a fourth generation craft farmer. A little over ten years ago, Jason carefully integrated virgin cold pressed oils into their 1000 acre family cash crop farm.

He designed and built a press mill to craft his own virgin canola, sunflower and soybean oils from non-GMO seeds grown on the farm. Jason, his family, and the team at Pristine Gourmet share a passion and unparalleled dedication towards creating pure, clean, high-quality oils that capture the flavours of the region. Their products are used in hundreds of restaurants and retail stores in Ontario, Quebec and Western Canada and have received glowing reviews from a variety of mainstream media, including features in The Toronto Star, Globe & Mail, and Ontario Grain Farmer to name a few.

We’ve been working with Pristine Gourmet since 100km Foods began, and are proud to say our partnership with them has been foundational for our company. We carry their oils, as well as their amazing wine vinegars, edible beans and pulses, most of which are available year-round. 

Their Sunflower, Soybean, and Canola oils are the flagship line of their products, and are pressed from non GMO seed and free of solvents and preservatives, which allows for their clear, full flavours. 

The Virgin Cold Pressed Canola Oil crafted by Pristine Gourmet is not your average canola oil. Dark golden colour, with a bold robust flavour makes this a favourite amongst top chefs -- not to mention that it is the lowest in saturated fat of all the oils. Pristine’s canola oil can be used in raw or cooking applications.

Pristine’s Virgin Cold Pressed Sunflower Oil is the lightest coloured of the three oils, with a flavour that transmits a sense of eating sunflower seeds in the summer sunshine. This is a highly versatile oil, useful in salad dressings, for frying, and in many other preparations.

Pristine’s Virgin Cold Pressed Soybean Oil has a unique, delicious nutty flavour of the three oils, with a rich yellow colour that retains its natural antioxidants after being pressed. The soybean oil is also high in poly- and monounsaturated fats, low in saturated fats and trans-fat free.