After hours of work in the woods, there has to be money in the back of Alexander McNaughton’s beat-up truck.
A newcomer to Powell River who arrived with his partner in March 2017, McNaughton forages wild food for a living under his business Umami Consulting.
Venturing out on a weekend to pick berries for baking a pie or canning jam is not McNaughton’s goal, nor is hunting for mushrooms to make a risotto. He is in it for the profit, and goes to work in the forest with his trusty dog, Jack, and a five-gallon pail slung from his shoulder.
It is a good living but McNaughton said he would never want his company to be the size of Vancouver’s multimillion dollar Mikuni Wild Harvest, which sells product internationally. Seeing what Mikuni was doing did give McNaughton his business idea, but his model is boutique.
“I actively source out products for people,” he said. “I’d ask the chefs, ‘What are you excited about? What would you be pumped to work with? What can I get you?’”
Whatever they wanted, McNaughton went out into the woods and found it for them, including some things his clients did not even know existed, to use in ways they did not know was possible.
“I want to be small and nimble,” said McNaughton. “I want to be niche and small and sexier.”
He harvests kilograms of wild food, including spruce tips, sea asparagus, nettles, wild roses, fiddleheads, berries and mushrooms. His business includes as many products as there are edible wild foods in the forest.
The main focus is on berries, and salmonberries are currently in season. The main market is the Lower Mainland.
“Powell River is hard for me,” said McNaughton. “I have some good distribution established in the last year but it’s not enough and the sales are small.”
Vancouver is where his pickings are used by people on the cusp of cuisine. Some of his product ends up as spruce tip or white-chocolate-juniper ice cream, specialties of Earnest Ice Cream in Vancouver.
“They grew and I grew and now they’re ordering 55 kilos this year,” said McNaughton.
Ben Ernst, who co-founded the hugely successful Earnest Ice Cream with Erica Bernard, said McNaughton helped grow their business and expand the palates of customers.
“Alexander is a one of a kind character,” said Ernst. “He came to us with various ideas of wild crafted products to use in ice creams. Spruce tips was one of the first things he approached us about and thought it would make an awesome ice cream flavour, and he was so right about that.”
McNaughton has suggested a lot of different wild foods for ice cream flavours over the years. The pine mushroom did not work out so well, according to Ernst.
“The spruce bud ice cream was one of the flavours that made us really stand out as a business and I know that it has inspired other businesses,” said Ernst.
Special seasonal and daily menus at hip Vancouver restaurants feature McNaughton’s fare from Powell River’s wild areas.
His clients including 28 chefs at restaurants such as Kissa Tanto, The Acorn, Wickaninnish Inn, Forage and Hawksworth.
McNaughton started his foray into food foraging for money as a dabbler.
“The first five years I supplied figs to a lot of restaurants,” said McNaughton. “They called me the figalo.”
He has operated as a commercial enterprise for the last five years.
“There were a lot of days at the beginning of my business where I actually lost money,” he added. “I spent money to do this. I enjoyed myself because I went for a paddle or for a hike but I just lost dollars.”
McNaughton said he is mostly self-taught. He added that he learned things in middle school about mushrooms and plants people did not care about and liked being alone in the woods.
“I went picking with old Italian ladies and old grizzly dudes from Merville,” he said. “You know, people who knew about strange things in the woods; very decidedly fringe characters who made me look normal.”
McNaughton went to Simon Fraser University for a degree in international development and urban planning, and a double minor in sustainable community health and dialogue. He worked for City of Vancouver planning food systems, doing community garden facilitation and non-profit work. Then he heard the call of the moss.
“Honestly, that’s exactly what it was,” said McNaughton. “I hate the city, I hate that life. What am I doing, just grinding it out in Vancouver?”
He moved to Ucluelet, where he found wild food everywhere.
“I started shipping to the city and quickly realized there was no money in it because Ucluelet has bad logistics and transportation,” said McNaughton. “I shipped things, it cost me too much money, it was a pain in the ass, it took too long and I didn’t like it.
In Powell River, McNaughton has found better logistics, more varied product, more access, more land, fewer people doing it, and he can pick and ship via Pacific Coastal Airlines the same day to restaurant clients in Vancouver.
