A visit to the “Oceans in Crisis” exhibit at Monterey Bay Aquarium in 2001 inspired founder Bill Carvalho to transform his family’s seafood company. By 2004, Wild Planet sourced their tuna exclusively from pole and line catch fisheries. The company selects only the finest quality, 100% sustainably caught seafood for all their products, placing environmental health as the top priority. …
Kettle & Fire
Paleo enthusiast Justin Mares was searching for a bone broth to help his brother Nick heal from an ACL tear in 2013. Online offerings were limited: non-organic, shipped with styrofoam, frozen. So he and Nick set out to develop their own recipe, and Kettle & Fire was born. They combine marrow bones with vegetables and filtered water in steel kettles. …
Piment d’Ville
Krissy Scommegna and Gideon Burdick traded life in Boston for a farm in Boonville, CA where Krissy started Piment d’Ville in 2012. Piment d’Ville is a Renegade Certified farm that produces hard to find chile powders, and offers better pay and working conditions than conventional farms. Krissy and Gideon also founded the Boonville Barn Collective to run farming and marketing …
Katz Farm
After a serendipitous trip to Italy, restaurateurs Albert & Kim Katz moved their family to Napa and helped launch the olive oil renaissance in California in the 90’s. Together with their partner, Jim Parr, they began growing organic olives in the historic Suisun Valley. Today the Katz’s offerings include award winning olive oils, artisan vinegars and honey. Truly top of …
Soquel Fermentation Project
Chemist Derek Mortensen leads the Soquel Fermentation Project where he blends modern science with traditional coolship brewing. A coolship is a type of fermentation vessel — it’s a flat, open tub used for cooling and fermenting wort. At Derek’s brewery in the Santa Cruz mountains, wort chills in the cold winter air and soaks up the microflora of the redwoods. …
Stemple Creek Ranch
Over a century ago, Angelo Poncia immigrated from Italy to a remote California outpost and founded a dairy at what is now Stemple Creek Ranch. Now in its fourth-generation, the ranch is proudly run by Angelo’s great-grandson Loren who reinvented the family business with a vision for superior quality grass-fed meats. At over 1,000 acres, Stemple Creek Ranch is protected …
Forager Project
Founded by Stephen Williamson and JC Hanley in 2013, Forager Project is a family-owned producer specializing in small batch, plant-based foods. Crafted in Indio, California, Forager’s protein rich yogurts are made from ethically sourced cashew milk. Forager believes that the food we eat is as important as the air we breathe, and they hope to improve human and planet health …
Devil’s Gulch, influentially productive
If you measure a farm’s output by influence, there’s perhaps no more fertile land in our fair state than a 65-acre patch near Nicasio named Devil’s Gulch Ranch.
The sweet goodness of Honey Mama’s
Christy Goldsby grew up in a family full of cooks, bakers, farmers, gardeners and happy eaters. “The kitchen was always a place of celebration, creativity, nourishment and joy,” she says. In 2012 she started Honey Mama’s in Portland, Ore., as a way to share her passion for healthy living and those celebrated family traditions. Her cacao-nectar bars are delicious desserts and …
A health-conscious spirit
Danya Mosgofian of San Francisco created the Sultry Gypsy Herb Company to make natural remedies that are alcohol-free but strong and efficacious.
Your neighborhood kombucha
Marin Kombucha founder Brian Igersheim studied biology and chemistry in college, then went to work in the food industry. This year, he launched his new venture to put his accumulated expertise to work making his own version of kombucha, the popular fermented fizzy tea drink. As the overview on the company’s website explains, kombucha is the result of “a playful ferment” – sugar turns …
The amazing tastes of Tara
“If you are having a bad day and want to make it better, have ice cream,” counsels Tara Esperanza. “If you are having a good day and you want to top it off, have ice cream.” We couldn’t agree more. Tara began making ice cream a decade ago in Santa Fe and set up shop in the East Bay a …
Midwinter freshness from Full Belly Farm
Anyone hailing from a colder clime marvels at the year-round bounty around here. Even in the middle of winter, our bins display a cornucopia of fresh, delicious produce, much of it from Full Belly Farms, a thirty year-old 350-acre certified organic farm in the Capay Valley, about 100 miles north of Sausalito. Their annual “Hoes Down” festival in October, an …
The great taste of Nana Joes Granola
There’s granola, and then there’s Nana Joes. It’s made in San Francisco by hand in a gluten-free kitchen, full of locally-sourced fruits and nuts, and sweetened only by maple syrup from an artisan producer on the East Coast. Former pastry chef Michelle Pusateri named it after her grandparents (one Nana, two Joes). “I was making my own granola and giving …
Bread SRSLY, a gluten-free love story
Bread SRSLY makes delicious, moist and nourishing gluten-free sourdough breads. It started with a college crush, a gluten-intolerant San Franciscan. Sadie Scheffer began to bake loaves of gluten-free sourdough bread in hopes of winning him over. The first attempts weren’t completely successful. “I got to work experimenting with new ingredients – sorghum flour, sweet rice, buckwheat,” Sadie recalls. “Many of …
From Fra’ Mani to you
Fra’ Mani Handcrafted Foods, based in Berkeley, California, was founded by nationally-recognized chef Paul Bertolli. Fra’ Mani strives to keep old world food traditions alive in taste and technique, and is committed to selecting ingredients of the highest quality to produce a wide array of hand-tied dry salami, sausages, cooked salumi and deli meats. Fra’ Mani works with family farmers dedicated …
Starter Bakery, born with a kouign amman
When Starter Bakery introduced its signature kouign-amann at Oakland’s Pop-Up General Store in 2010, the unique French delicacy proved so popular that a business was born. Driver’s is proud to be on Starter’s regular delivery route, featuring a selection of fresh handcrafted edibles daily. Starter’s award-winning specialty, pronounced kween a-mon, is an indulgent French pastry that is similar to a …
TCHO, obsessed from the beginning
TCHO is a craft chocolate manufacturer obsessed with creating amazing chocolate, innovating in everything they do, and making a better world — from tree, to bean, to bar. The obsession begins at origin with TCHOSource, its unique sourcing program, designed to obtain the best beans in the world while enabling its partners in country of origin to earn a better …