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Acornhouse
The founders' reaction after final delivery: "We are genuinely so impressed, and we can't thank you and the team enough for everything."
The Challenge
Acornhouse is a new cocktail bar opening this fall in Toronto's Davenport neighbourhood, built around Canadian foraging and locally sourced ingredients. Before opening, the founders ran a series of "Forage With Us" pop-up events: a bus trip out to a farm for a harvest tour, a multi-course meal, and drinks made from what they'd gathered that day. This shoot covered their second one.
The pop-up told the story in person. The challenge was capturing it in a way that did the same for people who weren't there. Not a highlight reel of a nice event, but something that explained who Acornhouse is and why they care as much as they do about where their ingredients come from.
The Story We Found
Foraging, Gathering, Bringing It Home
We built the film around a single idea from the brand itself: the squirrel. Acornhouse's founders describe their process as foraging, gathering, and bringing things home to the nest. We used that as the visual spine of the film rather than as a logo detail.
A Four-Part Arc
The narrative arc had four parts:
- The Land: forest, soil, seasons, foraging. Where Acornhouse comes from before it comes from a menu.
- The Journey: the bus ride out of the city. Conversation, anticipation, the shift from urban to rural.
- The Harvest: hands in soil, ingredients being picked and handled, the moment food starts becoming a meal.
- The Nest: the table. The meal, the drinks, the people, the philosophy coming together.
A Warm, Discovered Look
Visually, we kept things warm and earthy: burnt wood, amber, clay, cream, muted green. No sterile whites, nothing overly polished. The goal was footage that felt discovered, not staged: handheld when following people, slower and more deliberate for food and nature, with room left in every frame for vertical and square crops.
Five lightning-round interviews with the founders and key staff carried the story underneath the visuals, without ever turning the film into a straight talking-head piece.
The Execution
Following the Pop-Up's Own Schedule
We shot in a single day at Blue Gables Acres Farm, following the pop-up's own schedule: arrival and setup, a farm walk and harvest, kitchen prep, the meal itself, and a final round of interviews as the light went down.
In Their Own Words
After final delivery, James Park, Co-Founder, wrote: "The film feels so beautiful and truly captures what we're trying to create with Acornhouse. Not just the food and cocktails, but the people and the story behind the experience."
"We are genuinely so impressed, and we can't thank you and the team enough for everything. It was truly a pleasure working with you all."
James Park, Co-Founder, Acornhouse