2017 Winner
Wise 50 Over 50 Award™
Gary Morton – SKU Food
www.skufood.com
My career started working for a private business in the agriculture industry for 12 years, I worked worked for the Nova Scotia Department of Agriculture as a Sr. Business Management Specialist for 6 years and have had a private consulting practice that helps agriculture based businesses develop value added products for 20 years. My goal has always been to expand my consulting to share my 38 years of knowledge with more people in more regions. I always felt that I could do more but distances made it difficult to work with clients in other regions. However, technology now makes this possible through the internet and internet based tools. I can now package knowledge, practical experience and learning in ways that both expand my reach world wide and leverage my income opportunity.
I started SKUfood Inc, at age 59 with Peter Chapman age 50. We undertook to develop this new business venture because we saw an opportunity gap in the food industry for a specialized business service that could transform clients to new levels of success and make them more profitable. Life’s just too exciting to slow down after 50.
SKUfood was developed to fill a recognized training need gap, and combine leading edge resources and learning opportunity in one on-line community for the food & agri-food industry. Many food suppliers do not reach their potential, get the prices they need, or know how to build win/win relationships with retail buyers because the resources have not historically been easily accessible.
We have built up a client list of over 1,200 people and are continuing to develop this list and regularly communicate with our list through, email, webinars, Facebook and LinkedIn using an automated customer management system.
My community involvement is as co-chair of the Annapolis Valley Chamber of Commerce Ag Committee where we have developed an Agriculture Innovation Accelerator Award that has raised and given away in past 4 years over $130,000 in award prizes.
I an also a director with the F5 Refresh Group which is committed to developing new technology in our region and am an advisor to Farm Works a lending program for new food based businesses.