Take Part
June 13, 2016
excerpt
In western North Carolina, Alan Muskat has taken a more novel approach to capitalizing on the foraging boom, converting a deep knowledge of regional plants into the first-ever “u-pick, forage-to-table event company,” No Taste Like Home. Muskat is so committed to his craft that all his emails end with the peppy send-off “Foraging ahead.”
“Our bread and butter is tours where we take people out in the woods and then teach them what’s edible and what’s not,” Muskat says. “What they gather, they can take to one of six local restaurants we partner with, and they’ll prepare it for them free of charge. Since 2011, we’ve taken about 1,000 people out each year. Our business doubled in 2013 and again in 2015, and that’s even without doing any real advertising.”