The Smarter Way to Prep Food

Using your barrel lid as a cutting surface damages and weakens the lid, shortens its lifespan, introduces microplastics into your food, and adds unnecessary plastic contamination to the wilderness. Backcountry campers care deeply about their health and the environment — so I designed something better. A cutting board precision-built to fit the contours and grooves of a standard blue camping barrel lid. Convenient, clean, and purpose-built.

Storage space is everything on a canoe trip, and Barrel Buddy is designed with that in mind. Our Canadian-made hardwood cutting board fits perfectly into your blue barrel lid. Whether you have a 20L, 40L, or 60L, we have a barrel buddy for you. Since the Barrel Buddy is cut to fit inside the lid, it also means it fits perfectly inside of your barrel.

I sat on this idea for years before committing to doing it properly. That meant making it in Canada — not just assembling here, but actually sourcing and building everything here. Our hardwood is Canadian. We make our own food-safe hard-wax oil finish using beeswax from local farms and food-safe mineral oil from Canadian manufacturers. Even the finish is ours. Barrel Buddy is built in my hometown of Orangeville, Ontario, and nothing about it is mass-produced overseas.