Now retired, Tom Reid was a teacher, a “slow food” and “eat local” advocate, a food product manufacturer, a chef, a food columnist, a restaurant owner and a champion for the fledgling Northern Ontario agri-food industry.
Tom became obsessed with healthy food - free of additives and preservatives - when his brother was diagnosed with HIV AIDS and battling the side effects of his medications. His obsession led to the founding of Vinegar on the Rocks, a Sudbury business specializing in gourmet salad dressings, tapenades, mustards and salsas.
He won several national awards for his products, but selling to a mass consumer market was never a realistic objective given the challenges of getting his products accepted by the big supermarket chains, paying for shelf space and scaling up to supply their needs. Instead, he sold his products at farmers’ markets, fairs and small retail stores.
Tom worked as a teacher/librarian for 30 plus years and “had no business experience at all,” so it’s hardly surprising that some of his ventures failed, which is what happened to his restaurant, Applegrove Bistro and Charcuterie.
However, his obsession for food was never just related to his own business and personal interests. As a member of the Sudbury Food Security Network and the Agri-food Management Institute, he was an advocate for an agriculture industry in Northern Ontario able to serve as a local source of food.
A vibrant Northern Ontario agri-food sector won’t happen overnight, but nature has endowed us with the basics for eventual success, notes Tom. We have rich agricultural land around Sudbury and further north in the Clay Belt stretching from Hearst to Cochrane. Climate change will lengthen the growing season and the obsession for healthy eating that was only in its infancy when Tom saw the light in the 1980s is now going mainstream.
This video is surely food for thought if envisioning a more sustainable and healthier future is the first step toward realizing it.