Connecting Through Food
Growing Chefs: A Community Story
Insights: 2026 The Making of Tomorrow Survey
At its core, the mission of Growing Chefs! Ontario is simple: change the way children, youth, families, and the wider community learn about and develop healthy relationships with food.
"We aim to 'un-silo' the wealth of knowledge that chefs and folks in the culinary industry have when it comes to food sustainability and culinary experience, and bring that knowledge to the wider community," says Ben Elliott, Communications Steward for Growing Chefs! Ontario.
But what unfolds from that simple idea reaches far into the community: in classrooms where students begin to understand where their food comes from, in gardens that turn abstract lessons into something tangible, in shared meals that build confidence, curiosity, and a sense of connection, and in a dynamic food festival — Londonlicious — that invites residents and visitors to experience the best locally grown produce.
Growing Chefs traces its roots back to Vancouver, where pastry chef Merri Schwartz founded the program in 2006. After years in fine dining, she saw a gap: chefs held deep knowledge about food systems and sustainability, but that knowledge rarely reached the communities around them. Growing Chefs became her way of closing that distance, bringing chefs, growers, and everyday eaters into the same conversation.
Two years later, that idea took hold in southwestern Ontario. Inspired by the program’s early impact, restaurant manager Andrew Fleet launched the London chapter with a pilot at Tecumseh Public School in 2008. What began as a single school garden has since grown into something much larger.
Today, Growing Chefs! Ontario reaches across the region, partnering with more than 100 schools and dozens of community organizations.
Its programs — delivered in classrooms, kitchens, and online — have so far engaged more than 110,000 children and youth. The model is simple but effective: hands-on learning that builds food literacy, teaches practical cooking skills, and connects young people to where their food comes from.
Through Londonlicious, Growing Chefs! Ontario extends its work beyond schools and into the city’s dining rooms, inviting people to experience local food systems.
Relaunched in 2023, Londonlicious arrived at a moment when the food service industry was still finding its footing after the disruptions of the pandemic. The festival, held twice a year, is designed to support restaurants by drawing guests in with prix fixe menus, while reconnecting them with the growers, farmers, and suppliers who shape what ends up on the plate.
It creates space for relationships to re-form, between kitchens and producers, and between diners and the origins of their meals.
"We live in an incredibly bountiful area of the province. So, there's really no reason that our restaurants can't also be supporting local growers and producers as much as possible," Ben says. "It creates a circular economy and is a win for everyone."
That approach hasn’t gone unnoticed. In its first year back, the festival was named a finalist for “Culinary Tourism Event of the Year” by the Tourism Industry Association of Ontario and the Culinary Tourism Alliance, a signal that something meaningful is taking shape in the city’s food culture.
"People want to go out and see the exciting things happening in their local culinary scene," Ben says. "And if they can support their local farm at the same time it's even better."
For Growing Chefs! Ontario, the festival is a natural extension of its broader work.
Across all of this work, the through line at Growing Chefs! Ontario remains clear: food is a point of connection between people and place, between knowledge and practice, between everyday choices and larger systems.
