Why I cook gluten-free — because I live it too.

Hi! Welcome — I'm Chef Colleen, owner of OKGN To Go Fresh Shop.

This document's intention is to show transparency and my commitment to providing food that meets my vision for gluten-free assurance, a high ratio of quality ingredients, trusted cleaning and handling practices, and forecasting further education on these subjects.

Much of my career I focused on kitchens where the constraint was the craft — food-security kitchens, dietary kitchens, solidarity projects, and solar-punk freedom kitchens with lots of fire. I tell you, cheffing is rooted in revolution, as much as design, as much as deliciousness. I cherished the rooms where you learn to make something nourishing and beautiful out of what a person is actually able to eat. That's a different skill than plating for a tasting menu, and it's the one I'm proudest of. Cooking creatively inside real limits is the whole art of what I do.

I opened this kitchen because I have dietary needs, and I wanted to eat food that was fun. I looked around this town and knew it was full of inspiration. We have so many farms — we are the jewel region of fruit farming — and there is so much connection to the land. So I opened this shop: real food for everybody on the go. Inclusive by design of dietary premise, but fun, accessible, so we all can eat together.

My commitment to gluten-free, good-for-everybody food

Three promises hold up everything below:

1. A 100% dedicated gluten-free facility My kitchen was built with the intention of upholding gluten-free manufacturing standards, on a small scale. Gluten-free is the highest priority — no exposure in the space. That includes personal food, new appliances, and work equipment, all of which ensure no cross-contamination.
2. Well-educated sourcing My passion for correct health-safety measures motivates me to keep learning. By 2027, OKGN To Go will be certified by the Gluten-Free Food Program — the gold standard, at 5 ppm allowance in the facility. Third-party auditing matters because gluten-free is not just a diet — for many of us, it's a medical condition.
3. Nourishment and real food What I offer is food made from scratch, with thoughtfulness. To someone with dietary needs, that's your priority. To me, it's also imperative to be curious and to express food as the art I'm so passionate about. Food here has to bring you excitement to eat. Living with special needs is a gift — that's my why as a chef, and my passion to share with you. Let's be curious, be open, and learn to trust food. It's our deepest connection to the land and to yourself.

How I source my food

I handpick everything. I do not buy from large distributors — no Sysco, no Gordon Food Service. I go and choose the food myself, because sourcing is quality control: I get to see it, judge it, and reject what isn't right before it ever reaches you.

My purchasing priority, in order, is farms first, then locally available produce, then organic. In summer, roughly 70% of my produce is local and organic, handpicked from growers I know. In winter, the menu changes with the season — it turns toward the warm and nourishing, soups and stews — and my sourcing follows the valley's rhythm rather than fighting it.

I run a tight kitchen too — rotating is regular, so nothing sits and ages on a shelf.

I'll be honest about the tension in this, because it's real: good food is expensive, and part of why I exist is to feed people affordably. So I make deliberate choices. About 80% of my ingredients are genuinely high-quality — hand-selected, and often a real cost above the generic option. I do make choices for my economics as well — this is a business, and I know I can offer more when I grow more. The goal isn't to be stingy; it's to be savvy about cost control, while offering a genuinely good product every week.

The whole-food logic (how I think about "certified" gluten-free products)

Here is the most important thing to understand about my kitchen.

More than 90% of what I use is whole, single-ingredient food — produce, meat, grains, staples I can look at and understand completely. Less than 10% is anything processed or manufactured.

Not every whole-food ingredient has a gluten-free certified version, and even when one exists, it can cost two to three times as much — this is the economics side again. A certified gluten-free tapioca starch, for example, would triple my cost on an ingredient I buy in volume — which would raise the price of everything I bake with it. I won't do that lightly, because pricing people out works directly against the reason I opened.

So my standard is this: I certify what is 100% necessary — oats is example number one. I hand-pick the rest with a trained chef's judgment, and I only ever buy what I would eat myself. That's not a shortcut. Researching ingredients, understanding which grains and starches are safe, knowing what to trust and what to reject — that is my actual job, and the thing I've built my life around. My discernment is the product. This page exists so you can decide how much to trust it.

How I handle food, by group

Everything in my kitchen is prepared to British Columbia food-safety standards. Because the whole facility is gluten-free, none of these need special gluten-specific handling to separate them — there's nothing to separate them from. What follows is simply how I handle quality:

• Produce Handpicked weekly; farms, then local, then organic; washed and prepped fresh; rotated so nothing lingers.
• Meat Sourced to the same handpicked, quality-first standard; prepped on dedicated gluten-free equipment.
• Grains & starches I only use grains I've researched and know to be safe on a gluten-free diet — certified where it counts (oats), tried and trusted whole-food sources otherwise.
• Pantry & staples Chosen ingredient by ingredient, quality weighed against how much a recipe actually uses.

The standard I hold, and where I'm going

For clarity, here's the landscape most people don't know:

• 20 ppm The legal limit in Canada, the US, the UK, and the EU. To call food "gluten-free," it must contain no more than 20 parts per million of gluten.
• 10 ppm A stricter voluntary certification tier (GFCO).
• 5 ppm The gold standard for food service — the Gluten-Free Food Program (GFFP), endorsed by the National Celiac Association. Four times stricter than the law, and the certification built specifically for kitchens like mine.

My goal is GFFP certification in 2027. I'm being deliberate and honest about the language here: I don't yet have in-house gluten testing, so I won't quote you a parts-per-million number I can't independently prove. What I can tell you is true today is structural — a dedicated facility, equipment that has never touched gluten, and no outside food. Certification is the step that will bring third-party testing and verification, and turn my practice into a number you can check. That's the promise this page is building toward.