About Ned Bell
Chef, Advocate, Operator
Ned’s career spans restaurants, hotels, institutional food, agriculture, tourism and ocean conservation. Across all of it, he has used his position as a chef to connect better food with stronger businesses, healthier communities and more sustainable systems.
In 2014, he founded Chefs for Oceans and cycled 8,700 kilometres across Canada in 72 days, bringing chefs, producers, government leaders and coastal communities together around sustainable seafood. That campaign grew into two decades of advocacy that has taken him to the United Nations, earned national and international recognition, and led to roles with Ocean Wise and the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch Blue Ribbon Task Force. His cookbook, Lure: Sustainable Seafood Recipes from the West Coast, is now in its second printing.
As Buy BC Chef Ambassador for the BC Ministry of Agriculture and Food, Ned reached more than 215 million people over three years while building lasting relationships with farmers, fishers, producers and government leaders across the province.
He has also helped rethink food within public institutions. Ned led the culinary development of Vancouver Coastal Health’s Planetary Health Menu Pilot, which began at Vancouver General Hospital and expanded to three additional hospitals. The work received national coverage from CBC Radio and demonstrated how culinary expertise could help improve patient food while meeting complex clinical, nutritional, operational and financial requirements.
Ned’s recent work builds on substantial experience as a chef, restaurateur and operator. From 2019 to 2023, he and Kate co-owned and operated Naramata Inn, reopening the 1907 heritage property during a global pandemic and helping triple restaurant revenue in three seasons.
Earlier in his career, as Executive Chef of Four Seasons Hotel Vancouver and YEW seafood + bar from 2011 to 2016, Ned proved that responsible sourcing could also deliver strong commercial results. He moved the restaurant to 100% Ocean Wise seafood while annual sales grew from approximately $6 million to $10 million.
The common thread is not a single cause or project. It is Ned’s ability to turn ambitious ideas about food into programs, partnerships and businesses that work in the real world.
Ned Bell
Ned Bell has spent 30 years proving that food can do more than feed people. It can build institutions, shift systems and, on a good day, change what people think is possible.
Building What Comes Next
Some of Ned’s most significant work is now happening in the Okanagan. As Creative Advisor for Okanagan College’s $61.3-million Centre for Food, Wine and Tourism, opening in 2027, he is helping shape the restaurant concept, culinary identity, supplier strategy, operating systems and industry partnerships from the ground up.
Ned was born in the Okanagan, raised his family there and helped build two of its most celebrated restaurants. The Centre will train the next generation of BC’s culinary and hospitality workforce in Canada’s first UNESCO City of Gastronomy. For Ned, it is both a major professional mandate and a legacy project.
Destination BC has also selected Ned for content supporting two of its six new Iconic Destination Brands, Valleys & Vineyards and Rainforest to Rockies. These brands form part of the province’s long-term work to strengthen tourism and double annual visitor spending to $48 billion by 2036.
Ned was chosen because his career reflects the story BC wants to tell: local food, sustainable practices, a strong sense of place and distinctly British Columbian hospitality.
Work That Compounds
Ned’s work has a way of building on itself. His Buy BC role deepened the producer relationships that support his institutional and culinary work. His Planetary Health experience showed how food could be changed within a complex public system. His sustainable seafood leadership now informs Seafood Watch’s Canadian strategy, while his experience across food, hospitality and tourism strengthens his work with Okanagan College and Destination BC.
Each project makes the next one stronger because the relationships, knowledge and credibility are transferable. That cannot be manufactured. It is the result of 30 years of meaningful work across deeply connected industries.
Ned holds an Honorary Doctor of Technology from Vancouver Island University and is a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. After 30 years, he knows which projects are worth doing. He is fortunate to be doing some of his best work now.