DURANGO – In a recently renovated building in the shadow of Smelter Mountain, Louise Barton and her five employees at Farm To Summit prepare locally grown vegetables before placing them in a food dehydrator.
The Durango company makes dehydrated meals for campers, backpackers and others looking for a gourmet meal on the go, and it recently increased its production capacity by moving from a small kitchen on North Main Avenue to a larger facility along U.S. 160 west of downtown.
Today the team is shucking kale before blanching it in a 40-gallon tilt skillet. After that, the green veggies go in the dehydrator. Once the kale is sufficiently zapped of moisture, it’s combined with other dehydrated ingredients to create a meal such as Thai red curry, wild mushroom pie and Thai carrot slaw.
“It really depends on the meal on how we prep it, but in order to use as much local produce as possible, we really try to dehydrate and then use the ingredients in each meal,” Barton said. “We also really try to focus on packing all of our meals with veggies that we know our farmers are going to have, like carrots. Every meal pretty much has carrots in it because of that.”
Barton founded Farm To Summit in 2022 after frequent trips into the backcountry as a research botanist left more to be desired from a food perspective. Her co-founder, Jane Barden, grew up on a farm and knew how much food was wasted. The two experiences led to the creation of a company that produced convenient meals that tasted good and were sustainable.
Farm To Summit sources “seconds” produce — crops that are completely fine to eat but can’t be sold to supermarkets because of bruising or other imperfections. The company saves these seconds from the landfill and supports more than a dozen local farms in the process. Barton said their produce suppliers are mostly located within 20 minutes of Durango, and the company may work with farms on the Front Range and in New Mexico as they expand.
Using local produce has naturally helped the company avoid tariffs that have harmed other businesses in the outdoor industry.
The backpacking meal market is crowded with large players like Mountain House available at retailers like Walmart, but Barton is more focused on her niche of sustainable, gourmet meals sold online and in local outdoor gear stores.
Farm To Summit uses dehydration rather than freeze drying, which it says is more economical from an equipment standpoint and leads to a better taste and texture. The company’s ingredients maintain a chewiness, rather than turning to mush, compared to other brands on the market, Barton said. Combined with an ethos of sustainability, Barton has created a sweet spot that has taken off with consumers.
“I think that our brand really just hits people in the right spot, of like, it’s farm to table for backpacking or for camping,” she said. “Meaning that it tastes good and it’s supporting small farms, regenerative agriculture.”
She continued: “I think really, people are just hitting a spot now where it’s like, OK, we go to these really beautiful places, right? Like, we spend weeks planning a trip, and then we’re eating garbage. Like, it doesn’t make any sense. People want to eat something really high quality that supports their ethics.”
Farm To Summit got its start selling meals at the Durango Farmers Market before growing its network of retailers. After three years in business, the meals are available at REI after one of the retailer’s buyers saw Farm To Summit’s meals on sale at a Sprouts grocery store.
“The buyer was walking around in Sprouts and saw our stuff and remembered our name from the stack and thought maybe this brand could actually handle the volume that REI would throw at us because we were distributing to Sprouts at the time,” Barton recalled. “And so she pulled our application and gave us a call, which was awesome.”
Farm To Summit meals are available in about 30 REI stores and on the brand’s website.
“Food brands go through a review process that considers several key factors — such as taste, differentiation, scalability and sustainability,” said Nia Dorsey, REI Co-op nutrition and wellness buyer. “Most importantly, we evaluate what problem the brand could potentially solve for REI customers if selected.”
The move into the new Durango facility came just in time to produce the quantity needed by REI and will support Farm To Summit’s expansion goals. In May, the company received a $250,000 grant from the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade.
The city of Durango wrote a letter of support as part of the grant application, said Tommy Crosby, the city’s economic opportunity coordinator.
“They’re an incredible local company with an amazing supply chain of local vendors and local growers,” he said, “and they’re the exact type of company that the city of Durango wants to see try to grow and expand based in and out of our community.”
With the grant, Barton can hire employees to help with marketing and sales, she said. It will also allow the company to purchase equipment like a larger dehydrator and packaging and labeling equipment, which the company otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford.
“It’ll allow us to really bring on new employees and machinery, both of which will just increase our ability to to manufacture,” Barton said.
Scaling a business in Durango can be a challenge, Crosby said, because of a lack of available commercial buildings in town. To combat this, the city offers several programs. None are tailored to a specific industry (such as the outdoor industry), but Crosby said outdoor industry businesses often face challenges that the city’s programs hope to assist with.
Other outdoor businesses in Durango include electrolyte drink mix maker Tailwind Nutrition and bicycle frame builder Sanitas Cycles. SasquatchXC camp trailers were made in Silverton, but the company decamped to Farmington, New Mexico, one hour south of Durango.
Farm To Summit’s growth could lead it to international distribution. It was in talks with a large retailer in Canada before the election of President Donald Trump and his administration’s subsequent tariff threats. Barton said the project is on pause until things calm down, but it’s still an ambition.
“We’ll see how that goes,” she said. “It’s something we’re excited about, because we have a lot of Canadians that are asking for our food, and we’d like to find a way to give it to them a little cheaper than they pay now.”
Looking back after just a few years in business, Barton said she feels a deep satisfaction in getting to work with farmers, craft good meals and provide jobs in a small, rural town.
“It’s one of those things where you wake up in the morning and you’re like, whoa this is working, and working really well and so incredibly satisfying,” she said. “I mean, I left the Ph.D. program in climate change biology because I really didn’t feel like I was making a difference. I started this business, and I feel like I’m making a difference all the time.”