Deb Foote
Owner, CFO
Deb’s history in the Organic sector started in 1979 when fresh out of high school she joined Northern de Lights Food Co-op in Terrace, where she got a taste of working in the retail food sector. In May of 1986, having relocated to the lower mainland, Deb joined Wild West Organic Harvest Co-op, a BC based distributor of organic produce and package foods. For twenty years, she held numerous positions in the company including bookkeeper, sales and marketing manager and purchasing manager.
Deb & Garth met as a result of their work, and in 1993 when an opportunity to establish a store at the newly redeveloped Surrey Public Market, they cobbled together some money and opened the Organic Grocer in the fall of that year.
Deb loves to get her hands dirty. She spends many hours in her garden and applies what she has learned over the years to her everyday life. Over recent years she has delved into gaining a deeper understanding of how the Organic Regulatory System functions, by taking the Basic Farm Inspector Training offered by the International Organic Inspectors Association.
Over the course of the last 30 plus years Deb has served as a director with the following organizations: Northern de Lights Food Co-op, Wild West Organic Harvest, CCEC Credit Union, The Canadian Federation of Worker Co-ops, Farm Folk City Folk, Pacific Agricultural Certification Society (PACS) and the Certified Organic Associations of British Columbia (COABC), and the Organic Agriculture sector of Canada. More recently her focus has been on being involved in Community organizations on Mayne Island where she spends the bulk of her time.
