Eating it up
Edmonton fills up on new products with push from booming agri-food industry,
Noorudin Jiwani didn’t expect to shake up the provincial economy when he opened Aliya’s Foods in 2000.
But, together with others in Alberta’s expanding agri-food sector, Aliya’s Foods is part of an industry that exudes a cheerful glow. Even as oil prices remain low, there are high hopes for companies that manufacture food products from raw resources such as beef, mustard seed or milk — an industry that has tripled in value in the last 25 years, accounting for $14 billion a year in sales in Alberta, and employing 27,000 people in some 450 businesses.
“The question my wife and I asked was, ‘If we can sell Indian entrees and appetizers in Alberta, we should be able to sell anywhere in North America,’ ” recalls Jiwani, who came to Alberta from Ontario to start his business because a provincial civil servant took the time to reply when Jiwani emailed for information about the food business.
Aliya’s Foods, which makes everything from butter chicken to samosas under the Chef Bombay brand, started with five employees. Today, more than 100 work out of a 42,000-square-foot facility on Roper Road in south Edmonton.
Agri-food is still dwarfed by the oil and gas sector, with exploration and production revenue alone estimated at $111.5 billion for 2017. But as Todd Hirsch points out, when an industry triples output “it’s pretty significant.”
“The last 10 years in particularly, things have been ramping up,” says the chief economist for ATB Financial. “Make no mistake, a jar of organic honey isn’t going to replace oil. But things can begin to balance out.”
Smaller, niche food production is playing an increasingly important role in diversifying the economy, says Hirsch, in part because consumers want to support smaller, local businesses — setting the stage for success. Tiny, specialty manufacturers can also become big and mainstream over time.
“At this point in our economic evolution, we’re at a pivotal point. Energy is still going to be the backbone, but it’s not going to be as strong a driver anymore,” says Hirsch. “These small bits of diversity — all of it helps.”
Witness the stunning growth of The Little Potato Company, founded by the father-daughter team of Jacob van der Schaaf and Angela Santiago, who started with a one-acre plot 20 years ago, and now harvest 100 million pounds of potatoes yearly on 6,000 acres across North America. Similarly, Edmonton’s Kinnikinnick Foods began as a baked goods booth at the farmers market in the early 1990s. Now, it is one of the largest manufacturers of gluten-free products in the world.
Marilyn Boehm, president of the Alberta Food Processors Association, says there are barriers to expanding the food manufacturing industry in a northern locale like Alberta.
Operating costs are often much cheaper in the United States. Transportation and access to distant markets can be difficult.
But Boehm says “solid infrastructure” locally is an enormous asset to local food manufacturers, including the government-funded Leduc Food Processing Development Centre and incubator, founded in 1984 and the largest facility of its kind in Canada.
The Leduc centre, staffed with food scientists, engineers and technologists, helps small- and medium-sized entrepreneurs get their products off the ground. It also offers a federally-inspected facility that takes entrepreneurs to the next level of manufacturing, and allows them to export interprovincially and internationally.
Ken Gossen, head of the Leduc centre, says it develops 100 to 130 food products a year — from cheese to oat products for the cosmetics industry. Perhaps 30 make it into the marketplace. Businesses pay between $350 and $1,200 a day to access the centre’s services.
“If you go through a process like ours, we can increase your chance of success by 60 to 80 per cent,” says Gossen.
Aliya’s Foods is a proud graduate of the Leduc centre. Since 2010, the company’s sales have increased by 45 per cent, says Jiwani. About 65 per cent of Aliya’s products go to the United States, where they are sold in stores from Trader Joe’s to Walmart.
He credits the company’s success to several factors, including government support for the food industry, and co-operation among other big food companies in Edmonton such as Sunrise Bakery and Kitchen Partners, who work together to save money on freight, packaging and other expenses.
Jiwani says his staff has made all the difference in the world. He hires a lot of new immigrants at Aliya’s Foods, and they make excellent employees.
“I hire people from Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Philippines — this is their first job and half of them didn’t even speak English. They were getting up at three or four in the morning to be here by six on the bus. And now they have good houses and good cars.”
Growing the economy in Alberta is a key goal, to be sure. But for Jiwani, running a food business is about much more than that.
“I tell myself, ‘You made a difference in someone’s life.’ “
RANGE ROAD MEAT CO.
Edmonton’s Brandon Markiw could have pursued a career as a pro after landing at an American university on a golf scholarship. But it was a job at a meat-packing plant that unleashed his true calling. “The scholarship wasn’t for me,” says Markiw, 29. “I wanted to do my own thing.”
After completing a business degree in Vancouver, and at loose ends, Markiw went to work for his cousin’s meat plant. There, he learned all aspects of the business, from driving a truck to delivering products and meeting buyers.
“I realized there was a lot of opportunity out there, and demand outside the province,” he recalls.
Inspired, Markiw decided to create a line of premium, smoked, ready-to-eat meat that could be distributed across Western Canada. Working at the Leduc Food Processing Centre, Brandon and his father, Kevin Markiw, started with a smoked pork sausage ring. They selected the highest quality, freshest ingredients available, and combined those through a unique processing technique to create a lean sausage unavailable in the local market.
“I saw a disconnect with modern consumer expectations and these traditional products,” he says.
Nearly a year after they started, Range Road Meat Co. has developed five signature flavour profiles for sausages (such as French Provence and Cajun Southwest Chipotle) and plans to expand into the “snack space” with highquality pepperoni sticks and jerky. Their sausages are 92 per cent lean meat. Most comparable sausages use 20 to 30 per cent fat, says Markiw.
“Every day there is a new fire that sparks up and needs addressing, but it keeps things exciting,” says Markiw, who does every aspect of the business but sales — his dad’s preserve. “We’re getting our feet under us and seeing some positive resonance with customers.”
Forty Save-On-Foods stores across the Prairies are carrying the products, and Range Road hopes to soon stock 130 stores in B.C.
“There is something about feeding people, and the connection that’s established, that makes (this business) satisfying to be part of,” says Markiw.
BENT STICK BREWING
Calling Bent Stick a microbrewery errs on the side of generosity. The local artisanal beer manufacturer is actually a nanobrewery — a teeny-tiny germ of what it hopes to become. Still, it’s a vibrant participant in the Alberta craft beer movement, which has quadrupled in the last three years, going from 14 to 52 craft breweries and small brew pubs.
“We want to push ourselves creatively to make the most exciting new beers we can, and get them on the market,” says Scott Kendall of Bent Stick. “And to keep building slowly, by word of mouth and social media engagements, awareness of what we are doing here in the city.”
Using Alberta barley, Bent Stick makes a British-style ale that carbonates in the bottle, yielding a smoother, more natural fizz and a more robust flavour.
Bent Stick is owned by Kendall, along with Kurtis Jansen, Ben Rix and Patrick Gaudet — all of whom met while working at Alley Kat Brewery. They mixed potions at home, and talked about their love of a good brew. But it wasn’t until the Alberta government changed liquor regulations in 2013 to encourage small-batch production that the four decided to push their passion and create a business. They launched their product on Canada Day, 2016.
Today, they brew about two 800-litre batches a month out of a 1,700-square-foot bay in a light industrial area of northeast Edmonton. Everybody still has a day job except Kendall. You can find their 650-mL bottle at numerous independent liquor stores such as Keg n’ Cork, and Sherbrooke Liquor Store, and at bars and restaurants, including Otto and The Next Act.
“There has been a mentality change in Edmonton,” notes Kendall. “It used to be that if it was from Edmonton, it couldn’t be that good. But now there is much more support for producing things are uniquely Edmonton.
“And within the beer market, tastes are moving away from mainstream, industrial-made macro-lagers — the Labatts, the Molsons. They are slowly losing market share because people are looking for more, different tastes.”