The latest winner of the $2000 BizGiver Grant is crowned; Wild Forage, a small business supplying seasonal wild edible plants, herbs and seaweed to high end restaurants is awarded a new portable fridge, critical to their business.
Wild Forage is bringing cooking back to its roots, providing wild ingredients to high end restaurants around the Sunshine coast area, that owner Nick Blake finds himself in the wild.
Nick started his business after leaving the long hours of a Sous Chef at a two-hatted restaurant and training with world-renown two star Michelin chef Rene Redzepi for three months intensively on the professional art of foraging.
“I learnt to forage professionally and was captivated immediately. The importance of seasonality, how to collect and the notion of connecting our palates to the landscape as a way to celebrate our very existence appealed to me immensely,” explains Blake.
While his business has quickly grown, Nick has often found himself fighting the Queensland heat to get his produce form nature to table.
“I have been spending money on ice to keep my foraged produce crisp whilst travelling between foraging sites,” he acknowledges “ This has become an ongoing expense. A portable fridge was outside of my budget but jumped at the opportunity to apply for the grant. The fridge once connected will enable me to stay out all day without having to drop off produce at home to be chilled before going out again. This is very time consuming and costly at present.”
The grant, started by BizCover Insurance in 2014, has given away over $40,000 in prizes to date to Small Businesses of all types across the country. These prizes have included content writing, training, computers, hardware, washing machines and in Wild Forage’s case, a portable fridge.
His win will allow him to take his portable fridge with him on his forages, removing the need to make multiple return trips to refrigerate.
“The fridge once connected will enable me to stay out all day without having to drop off produce at home to be chilled before going out again,” continues Nick “I’ll be able to venture further than I have been in the past without the risk of losing my produce.”
“Our success is due to the small business community, who have embraced our online insurance services over more traditional methods of buying insurance, said Michael Gottlieb, Founder and Managing Director of BizCover, “Having the ability to help a business like Wild Forage, with a ‘wish’ that will allow them to venture to new places – both literally and figuratively – is precisely what the BizGiver Grant is about.”
So what is ahead for Nick’s future now?
“[One day soon] I’d like to be running my own restaurant creating unique food experiences based on my foraging knowledge and research. I am learning all the time but am realistic about taking small steps, continuing to focus on quality and showing continual improvement. I’d also like to focus on the educational element and show how foraging can be achieved sustainability with the right mindset and etiquette.”
You can find out more about Nick and Wild Forage on their Facebook here. www.facebook.com/wildforageaustralia
You can enter your own wish here: https://www.bizcover.com.au/bizgiver/
