Valley Mill Foods is a community food hub on Galiano Island, a popular tourism destination less than an hour away from Vancouver. Complete with a vegetable garden, greenhouse, food and beverage production, restaurant, and multiple fast-casual offerings, our vision is to create a multi-faceted and vertically integrated food and beverage company.
We have the unique advantage of blending agriculture, food and beverage production, retail space, and restaurant service into one integrated location. For example, our customers can have lunch, purchase a loaf of fresh bread, a bag of house-milled flour, all in one visit to one location.
No existing restaurant operation in our market offers the variety of high quality, locally made food and beverages nor do they focus so heavily upon growing their own produce on site.
Valley Mill Foods was founded in 2021 to become one of the go-to food and beverage producers on the Southern Gulf Islands. We strive to provide a wide variety of food products to our customers, ranging from high-end restaurant offerings to house-milled flour and fresh organic produce sold in our retail space and online store.
Located on Galiano Island in the beautiful Georgeson valley. Our property is nestled between a hobby farm and an artisan soap producer in an up-and-coming commercial corridor between Montague Harbour and the existing commercial hub at the intersection of Porlier pass and Georgeson bay road. Along with our restaurant, our property includes an organic vegetable garden and greenhouse, a and Valley Grill.
Mission, vision, values
Our Mission: To provide locals and visitors a place to enjoy freshly prepared food made from high-quality, locally grown ingredients. By rethinking the traditional supply chain, our company has built a resilient network of local farmers, ranchers, and fishers to ensure our customers access to affordable, healthy, and delicious food.
Our Vision: To become a vertically integrated food-hub that can provide our guests everything from a high-end restaurant experience to their everyday produce and grocery needs. We are collaborative in nature, and hope to be a blueprint for other entrepreneurs in small communities that want to follow our lead.
Our Values:
- We believe our world needs more local food production and less dependence on the “just-in-time” global supply chain.
- We acknowledge the average western diet is not sustainable in its current form, from both a climate change and human rights perspective.
- We believe in the power of community and collaboration. We are committed to provide a true living wage to all employees, with a profit-sharing bonus structure to fairly distribute the value we have all built together.
Our People
Ross Mills
Ross is owner/operator of Valley Mill. He decided to open Valley Mill after co-owning a type design company for over 20 years. Ross’ passion is food, food experiences, and travel.
Erin Howell
Born and raised on Galiano, Erin has a strong bond to her island community. She has extensive experience in the restaurant industry and previously owned and operated a housekeeping business.
Aslan Mackay
Born and raised on Galiano, Aslan recently graduated with distinction from the B.Com program at the University of Victoria. He’s now officially a “weekender” after moving to Victoria to pursue his CPA designation.