Thank you for a fantastic Food Summit 2026!
From the entire Right To Food team - we appreciated connecting with you on Tuesday, April 28 and Wednesday, April 29, 2026 at the Evergreen Brick Works in Tkaronto/Toronto. This event was a great way to connect with 400 like-minded peers from the community food sector through sharing ideas, conversations and learning.
Food Summit 2026: Rooted in Community, Flourishing Together.
The Food Summit brings together partners from across the country to share ideas, build relationships, and cross-pollinate solutions, working collectively towards a vision where every community has access to food, belonging, and the power to lead change.
Like pollinators, this network gathers wisdom from our communities and carries it forward, strengthening local leadership and cultivating the conditions for lasting transformation. Just as biodiversity sustains healthy ecosystems, diverse voices and lived experiences strengthen the places where food connects us: in neighbourhoods, gardens, markets, and community spaces.
Our collective flourishing depends on deep roots in place, strong relationships, and care for all relations, the lands, waters, and air that sustain us.
Over the two days, we will exchange ideas, spark collaboration, and champion community-led approaches that demonstrate and advocate for sustained, transformative change. We invite participants to bring their creativity, experience, and bold vision and look forward to us all returning home nourished and inspired to continue building thriving communities.
Scroll down to learn more about:
+ What is the Food Summit
+ New registration options
+ Travel and accommodation
+ Discounted Hotel Option
+ Getting to the venue
+ Additional activities
Plenary Interpretation and Virtual Participation: This year, exclusive to the plenary sessions, we’re excited to offer Simultaneous French-English interpretation and Virtual tickets. (Session 4.D. on April 29 will be bilingual and also have simultaneous interpretation.) Learn more below.
Be sure to check The Bulletin and Partner Portal for all the latest updates! You can subscribe to the Bulletin here. If you have any questions about the event, please email foodsummit@righttofood.ca.
What is the Food Summit
The Food Summit is a partner-facing event hosted by Right To Food every two years, bringing together 400 representatives from our partnering Community Food Centres and Good Food Organizations. The event connects us to the larger community food movement as well as with each other. It includes over 25 workshop sessions, panels, presentations and activities, chances to network and connect, and enjoy delicious nourishment.
Who should attend?
Participation at the Food Summit is for Right To Food partners (Good Food Organizations or Community Food Centres), and attendance is free of charge. Find out if your organization is a current GFO member.
We ask that each organization registers no more than 2-3 participants per organization to allow more organizations to take part in-person. Each attendee should have a separate registration (but one manager or staff can register their team members at once if they wish).
The Food Summit is an amazing professional development opportunity, allowing for learning, an exchange of ideas, gaining practical tools, networking and building a stronger sense of community and purpose.
We strive to design a schedule that has something for everyone involved in community food programming, including chefs, program coordinators, advocacy leads, executive directors and more. This is a great opportunity to encourage staff from various levels of your organization to dive deeper into their areas of experience and network in person with others doing the same work across the country.
What to expect?
Over the two days you’ll be able to participate in:
- Engaging workshops, presentations and discussions on a wide variety of themes.
- Hands-on breakout sessions on programming, collaboration, advocacy and mobilization.
- Delicious meals and snacks, and fun social activities.
- Time to enjoy the beautiful space, surrounded by lots of trails and nature.
- Moments for connection, learning and sharing with others.
What is included in your registration?
Attendance at the Food Summit is free of charge, and includes:
- Attendance to the two days of the Summit, including a social event (day 1).
- Meals during the event (light breakfast, snacks, lunch and beverages); and delicious bites at the evening social on Day 1.
- An optional shuttle bus from our partner hotels to the Summit venue. (Sign up for the bus in the Registration).
What is not included?
Participating organizations are required to cover and coordinate:
- Travel costs to Toronto
- Accommodation in Toronto (discounted rates are available at our partner hotels - see below)
- Transportation to the venue each day (Optional free shuttle bus is available from our partner hotels)
- Meals outside of the designated Food Summit programming.
If the travel and accommodation cost is prohibitive for your team, please consider applying for a travel bursary (see below).
New registration options
Simultaneous French interpretation
While all sessions and presentations will be facilitated in English, this year we are excited to offer English to French simultaneous interpretation for our Plenary sessions. Attendees who would like this option should indicate so on their registration. Attendees will receive headsets to use for the duration of the Summit. Note that, Session 4.D. on April 29 will be bilingual and have simultaneous interpretation.
Plenary Virtual Ticket option
We understand that not everyone has the time and capacity to attend the Summit in-person. This year we will be live-streaming the Plenary sessions. Partners who are unable to attend in-person can opt to attend our plenary sessions virtually in English or French. To register for the virtual sessions, choose the Virtual Ticket option when registering.
Travel and accommodation
Discounted Hotel Option
Discounted rates are available at our two partner hotels, the Holiday Inn Toronto Downtown, 30 Carleton Street, and at the Chelsea Hotel, 33 Gerrard St W. These discounted group rates are only valid until April 17 or while rooms are still available.
Chelsea Hotel is a 4 star hotel, conveniently located close to the Eaton centre. A ‘hop and a skip away’ is the 3.5 star Holiday Inn Hotel. We are offering pre-arranged, free shuttle buses to all Summit attendees from both hotels to and from the Summit venue each day. Read more about Shuttle buses below.
We encourage you to book as early as possible, general cancellation policy will apply. See the Hotels section below to learn more.
Bursary for Travel and Accommodation
Right To Food has a limited amount of travel and accommodation bursaries available for Good Food Organization staff traveling from outside of Toronto. Prioritization will be given for applicants who identify as Indigenous, Black and Racialized staff, and for those with significant travel costs or with limited professional development budgets.
Bursary applications are now closed.
Getting to the venue
Evergreen Brick Works is located at 550 Bayview Ave, Toronto, ON, M4W3X8. There are a few different ways to get there.
Right To Food Shuttle School buses
On both days, Right To Food has arranged free shuttle (school) buses to take attendees to Evergreen Brick Works in the morning and back at the end of the day, from the (i) Holiday Inn Toronto Downtown, 30 Carlton Street and (ii) Chelsea Hotel Downtown Toronto, 33 Gerrard St W.
Note: If you’re not staying at these hotels, you can still request to use the shuttle transportation and meet at the hotel for pick up/drop off.
Please be sure to indicate which shuttle buses you plan to use in your registration. In your registration, please be sure to indicate which shuttle bus pick up/drop off location you plan to use. If you’re not sure whether you require this free transportation, you can always update your registration info at a later date.
Other ways to get to Evergreen Brick Works
There are other ways to get to Evergreen Brick Works, listed on their website, including their own Evergreen Shuttle Bus, biking, walking, public transit, and driving.
The Evergreen Shuttle Bus departs every 30 to 45 minutes from Broadview subway station. Exceptionally, during the Food Summit, this shuttle service has been extended to run every 15 minutes from 6:45am - 7:00 pm on both days.
If you’re coming by car, there’s also a limited amount of paid parking on site. Paid parking is available on site, managed by INDIGO Park.
Learn more about getting to Evergreen Brick Works on their website. Or see more visitor information.
Additional activities
Bring seeds for the Seed Swap 🌱🌱🌱
We’ll have a Seed Swap table during the event. Come check out seeds, learn about new ones, or share some of your own. Please bring seeds in a sealed bag or container. If possible, label the seeds with the Name, Variety, quantity (if possible), year of harvest and any other helpful information.
Spaces for quiet and reflection
There will be two spaces available for prayer, reflection and meditation: 1) near the registration area, and 2) outdoors at the Strawberry Heart Lodge. You can also go out and explore the land at any time.
A quiet prayer space will be dedicated to those who want to take a breather, meditate, pray, and rejuvenate their mind, body, and spirit. You are invited to bring dried plants for smudging, making tea blends, and for sharing knowledge. Please be sure to have all dried plants labeled in their containers to ensure folks can safely access them if they so desire.
About Evergreen Brick Works
Right To Food has hosted the past three Food Summits at this beautiful place that connects us with nature and the land. Participants are encouraged to explore, wander and experience the natural spaces around them white at the event.
Evergreen Brick Works is a special place where people can connect with one another, nature and themselves. This climate-ready place is for people to experience and learn sustainable practices that enable the cities of the future. Through their public markets, which act as incubators for small businesses, pilot programs in the Children’s Garden, or the redevelopment of the historic kiln building to achieve carbon neutrality, successful ideas born there are then scaled and implemented across Canada through Evergreen’s projects.
Evergreen Brick Works functions as a social enterprise, meaning that any profit they make from their revenue-generating ventures is invested in maintaining the Brick Works and used to fund Evergreen’s work across Canada.
Looking forward to gathering with you!
The Knowledge Exchange team at Right To Food,
Karthi, Dion, Mam, Raymond, Ziadh, Meredith and Brooke
Above: GFO & CFC staff participants with sweet dance moves at Food Summit 2024.
Schedule
More Info
Updates
Scroll down to learn more about:
- The Pollination Station
- Event menu
- Eats and Beats social event
- Graphic Illustrator
- Photographer
The Pollination Station
Be sure to drop by the Pollination Station in the Young Centre, where you’ll find a number of important services and activities:
✅Drop by the Registration & Welcome table to check in when you arrive to get your nametag and Summit program. Folks will be there throughout the event to answer your questions and or help you navigate Evergreen. You can also purchase a Right To Food t-shirt for $25!
📍Meet your Regional Coordinator for a friendly chat on Tuesday morning between 8:00 - 9:30 am.
🐝Enjoy a local honey tasting with the Toronto Beekeepers Collective, on Tuesday, between 3:00 - 6:30 pm.
☕Grab a coffee and get answers to your burning program evaluation questions at the Evaluation Cafe, Located in the Picnic Cafe on Wednesday, from 2:15 to 4:00 pm.
🌱Bring seeds for the seed swap table, provided by Toronto Seed Library, where you can exchange a wide variety of seeds on both days from 9:00 am - 5:00 pm.
ℹ️Drop by the Greenshield Essential Medicines Program info table to learn more about what’s available, all day on both days.
Event menu
We are excited to work with the Food Dudes for the full Food Summit menu, whose culinary expertise will create a uniquely delicious experience for the event!
Note: For all meals, dietary restrictions have been taken into consideration and alternative options are available, such as Halal, gluten free, vegetarian, vegan, dairy free. Special meals will be set aside for those with specific dietary needs.
🥯A continental breakfast spread will start us off on both mornings, with such treats as fresh baked breads, bagels, fresh fruit, muffins and yogurt.
🥪Day 1 lunch will be a Pantry Boxed Lunch with choices of Buffalo Chicken Caesar Wrap, Peppercorn Roast Beef, Falafel Wrap or Greek Quinoa.
🥗Day 2 lunch will be a Lunch Buffet, including Chicken breast with herb salad, Smashed potatoes with herbs and caramelized onions, Grilled Broccolini, Rasa Chopped salad, Caesar salad 2.0 with Jalapeno dressing, Vegetable curry with forbidden and wild rice, and a selection of chocolate bites for dessert.
Download the Food Summit menu (PDF) for full details.
Eats and Beats social event
At the end of Day 1, Tuesday April 28th, from 5:30 - 6:30 pm, enjoy delicious eats and excellent beats at the Food Summit social event!
The live performance will feature the Samba Reggae band, TDotBatu. Founded in November 19, 2012 by Pato Irie, a distinguished Samba Reggae master, TDot Batu is a renowned cultural organization based in Toronto, dedicated to the preservation, promotion, and celebration of the vibrant Afro-Brazilian music genre known as Samba Reggae. As a hub for Samba Reggae education, performance, and community engagement, the organization actively collaborates with local schools, community centers, and cultural organizations, sharing the rich history and cultural significance of Samba Reggae through workshops, interactive demonstrations, and outreach programs. Watch video 1 and Video 2 on YouTube.
The menu for the social event will be prepared by Food Dudes, with food samplings from Geladona.
Among the tasty dishes to be served, you’ll be able to enjoy a delicious Horseradish soup made using a recipe from Roots Community Food Centre.
“Folks here LOVE the horseradish soup! It's basically potato leek soup's cool older sister that listens to alternative music on vinyl and will pick you and your friends up from from the mall. Students enjoy foraging for the horseradish, and even the pickiest eater finds the soup surprisingly yummy.”
~ Murph from Roots CFC
After the social event, shuttle buses will return guests to the Holiday Inn and Chelsea hotels at 6:30pm.
Graphic Illustrator
We’re delighted to have a graphic recorder, Brittany Datchko from Fuselight Creative, during our Food Summit. Brittany will be listening to our discussions, panels and presentations, and summarizing the main themes into visuals and text. During the breakout sessions, participants are welcome to share anything that resonates with them, or that they’d like to add or change in the visuals. The finished graphic recordings will be shared with Food Summit attendees after the session as well.
Brittany Datchko specializes in finding the “poetry” in visuals, weaving together beautiful, organic layouts that bring a unique rhythm to every project. She is passionate about supporting gatherings focused on gender, identity, intersectionality, and 2SLGBTQIA+ experiences. She approaches her work with a strong focus on representing “whole-person” identity, ensuring her illustrations reflect real people in all their complexity.
Photographer
Gabriel Li of Studio Gabe will capture highlights of the Food Summit for us to share with you all. Gabe is a lifestyle photographer, passionate about food, basketball & everything Toronto.
How We Want to Gather
In the lead up to the event, the planning team wanted to share a bit more information about the intentions we bring to Food Summit.
This network is made up of individuals who work hard every day to intentionally create spaces of belonging in community - places where community members feel reflected, respected and play a role in shaping the programming and support being offered.
As we prepare to gather with each of you at the Food Summit, our team has been working hard to bring together elements that support a sense of belonging – from nourishment, to nurturing, openness, design, connection and representation. Each detail of the Summit is informed by what guides our work, what we’ve learned from the events we’ve hosted and participated in, inspiration from how you lead in these ways, and the feedback we gather from partners along the way.
We wanted to share with you some of the elements we’re weaving into place, and invite you to provide any suggestions for how we might better support your sense of belonging during our time together.
You can see from our posted Agenda that the schedule covers a wide range of topics and formats, weaving in the varied priorities and expertise within our network.
Indigenous and Black Leadership
Our vision is for the right to food to be realized, and that every community has a place for food that nurtures health, wellbeing, belonging and social justice. With Indigenous and Black communities disproportionately impacted by food insecurity, we embed working with leadership within these communities as central to informing, shaping, and restoring the pathways each of us must support, to transform the systems of oppression and systemic racism that have led to these inequities.
Throughout our two days together, and across our ongoing activities offered online, we continue to be committed to centering the voices, priorities and perspectives of Indigenous and Black organizations and communities, as speakers, facilitators, advisors and vendors. There is an abundance of leadership within our network - and we know many of you have connections to other leaders within your own circles.
Connecting with Each Other
The sessions we’re coordinating are designed to make the most of this unique opportunity to spend time together in person.
Every session offered and every element of the agenda has been curated with intention, with lots of time for networking, opportunities to share with one another, identify opportunities for collaboration and centre time to deepen in relationship.
We realize that in the food security sector, it’s hard to find the time to meet in-person with other community organizations. Using the opportunity of coming together at the Food Summit, would you like us to find some additional time in the agenda to give Indigenous partners to connect with one another and Black partners a chance to connect with one another?
Connecting to the Land
We selected Evergreen Brick Works as our venue because of the significance of the space. In our time together we’ve embedded moments to be out on the land, to walk together, reflect, connect and celebrate. We encourage participants to step away as they need to, to walk by the rivers, get grounded and take the time you need to be present in the moment. We invite you to connect to the histories that came before our time together, that continue to shape our futures.
Nourishment
The energy we bring to the Food Summit is just as important as the content of our conversations. This includes visiting welcoming and inspired spaces during the site visits, to the selection of the menu, who represents the diverse flavour preferences of our partners. We hope this time together not only provides you with inspiration and energy to bring back to your communities, but that it nourishes you in ways that support and restore you after all that you give and put into your work.
Deepening Our Impact
As we round the corner towards our time together we want to keep the channels open to hear from you about how we might be able to strengthen our approach. This could be while making connections to new partners, in particular opportunities to learn from local Indigenous and Black leaders engaged in building places for food in their communities, or regarding conversations or spaces you want us to consider creating. We welcome your feedback, insights and ideas, and the opportunity to collaborate with you to make these two days together more aligned with your priorities.
Please feel free to reach out to us at foodsummit@righttofood.ca and let us know your thoughts via email.