GOOD PEOPLE WITH AN APPETITE FOR CHANGE.

Goodly Foods Society was created from the desire to make good food from surplus natural ingredients, and give people with barriers to traditional employment good jobs in the process.

It all began in 2013, when Goodly Co-founder and CEO Aart Schuurman Hess needed to figure out what to do with over 9,000 kilograms of bananas that were donated to the local food bank he was working for, all in one day. Given how quickly bananas spoil, the team decided to use part of the donation to create banana bread instead, with a much longer shelf-life and arguably much greater appeal. This sparked an idea of what more could be done with produce of other kinds.

With a shared passion for positive change within the community, a pilot project was started with the generous support of co-Founder Yuri Fulmer from private equity investment firm Fulmer & Company. Yuri is the Chair of the Board of Goodly Foods and, together with Directors Fabio Banducci and Blair Rebane, has been actively involved in the growth of the organization since its inception.

The success of the pilot was also thanks in no small part to Vancity’s enviroFund™ Program, in-kind brand development from Rethink Communication and donations from, BC Fresh (Kelly Farms, Heppell’s, Canadian Farms), Fresh Start Foods and Gordon Food Service. Our small team grew quickly and Goodly Foods Society became an independent social enterprise in 2019.

In January 2019, Goodly Foods began production and distribution of its first product, Hearty Tomato Vegetable Soup, thanks to a generous investment grant from the Walmart Foundation, and the support of our partners along the way. We’ve been proud to work closely with Commissary Connect and HAVE Culinary Training Society to help identify and help train our hard-working production team.

Since then, we’ve become a HACCP certified food processor, launched an extraordinary lineup of new soups, expanded our distribution across the country, and we’re working on more new recipes to be released soon. Most importantly, we’ve turned tons of produce into tasty foods, while creating accessible living-wage jobs in the process.

So many people and organizations have supported us with generous donations of all kinds, including their energy, to help us get started. We’d like to give an extra-big thanks to the partners that are fundamental to everything we do, as we continue to grow. We truly appreciate it.