PEI Food Strong
SOURCE TO SHELF
ABOUT
Who we are
PEI Food Strong is a Canadian for-profit social enterprise focused on strengthening the business side of Prince Edward Island’s local food sector, from source to shelf.
A Business with a Social Purpose
PEI Food Strong is a Canadian for-profit social enterprise. We build sustainable, revenue-generating businesses and projects designed to strengthen our local food sector.
Social enterprises are a different kind of corporation. Success is measured not only by financial returns, but also by how well the organization fulfills its social mission.
Our mission is embedded in our articles of incorporation: to help our local food sector become more secure, resilient and self-sustaining.
Our work is designed to strengthen Island food businesses, create practical local capacity and keep more of the benefits here in PEI.
How We Work:
We start with what PEI already has: good food, skilled people, businesses, facilities, equipment and ideas. Then we look for what is missing between source and shelf and work to bridge the gaps.
We use what others overlook to build what we need - from premises and facilities, to systems and equipment.
MISSION
More sustainable. More resilient. More secure.
PEI Food Strong works to strengthen Prince Edward Island’s local food sector by building practical, commercially sustainable solutions from source to shelf.
We focus on what is holding Island food back, including gaps in product development, processing, infrastructure, market access and new commercial opportunities.
HOW WE WORK TOGETHER
PEI Food Strong Inc.
For-profit social enterprise
For-profit social enterprise focused on the business side of Island food: commercial strategy, product development, food transformation, shared facilities, market development and earned-revenue activity.
Food Strong Network
a network collaborating for a common mission
A coalition of people, businesses, organizations and experts working together to strengthen PEI’s local food ecosystem.
Canadian Source-to-Supper Network
Canadian non-profit corporation
Non-profit focused on community food initiatives, education, research, food security and public-interest work.
PEI Cooks
Consumer food-education program
Consumer-facing food brand connecting Islanders with recipes, cooking, local food businesses, markets, experiences and the PEI Cooks App.
PEI Good Eats
Independent community platform
A 23,000+ member Facebook community founded by our founder and CEO, Parry Aftab. An important way we stay connected to what Islanders are buying, cooking, asking for and struggling with.
PEI Food Strong works alongside several connected organizations and community platforms. Each has a different role, but they share a common goal: strengthening Island food from source to shelf and source to supper.
PARRY AFTAB
Co-founder and CEO, PEI Food Strong
"Ask Parry about PEI food and she'll talk for hours."
She loves it - the farmers, the fishers, the food makers and the innovators who quietly sustain what is pure Island. She sees where PEI is already doing it well, and she sees where it could do it better.
Recent trade conflicts sharpened what she had long observed and helped turn those ideas into action. But the efficiencies, connections and opportunities she is working toward are not a response to one moment. They are built to last.
For 30 years, Parry was a global leader in digital policy, risk management, safety and best practices - building ecosystems, forecasting risk, framing standards and bringing unlikely partners to the same table.
When she moved that experience to agri-food, she wasn't starting from scratch. She'd already founded a 23,000+ member network for Island home cooks, written a local food cookbook, and spent years writing a weekly column - and generally eating her way from one end of the Island to the other.