ROOM TO GROW: HOW CHRISTINE MANNING TURNED A FAMILY TRADITION INTO A THRIVING BUSINESS
What do you do after planting a raspberry bush in the backyard, aside from popping the juiciest ones into your mouth? If you’re Christine Manning, you launch a preserves company – and then some.
After having worked in marketing for close to 20 years, Toronto-based Manning was ready for a change. “I always had a passion for it – I blame it on my mother,” she laughs when asked about what inspired her entrepreneurial path. “She’s Italian, so I grew up in a preserving household.”
Manning was preserving way before it was considered cool, she says, and was often mocked by friends for doing “something your grandmother did.” But the entrepreneur would soon get the last laugh – and a slew of accolades, including winning Gold at the World’s Original Marmalade Awards and being honoured by the BMO Celebrating Women program in the category of Expansion & Growth in Small Business.
Manning planted her first garden in her new home in the Toronto neighbourhood of Guildwood a few years ago. Not wanting to let any of the crop go to waste, she tapped into tradition and began preserving. Soon, Manning was selling her products at a local farmer’s market, where she caught the eye, and mouth, of a manager of a butcher shop who asked to carry her preserves in his store.
Launched in 2012, Manning Canning today sells 11 different preserve products in 120 retail stores across Canada and online. The company recently expanded its product line to include three flavours of a health beverage called Shrub, a new take on a 17th-century elixir known as “drinking vinegar,” for which cold-pressed fruit juice is infused with organic apple cider vinegar.
In 2014, frustrated with finding reliable rental kitchens from which to produce her products, Manning took another step by launching Manning Canning Kitchens, a commercially certified rental kitchen located in the Leaside neighbourhood of Toronto. The hope was to offer
YOU HAVE TO WORK ON YOUR BUSINESS, NOT IN YOUR BUSINESS
similarly challenged small food producers the opportunity to grow. “I’m most proud of the fact that as we grow our business, we’re also helping other food entrepreneurs start and grow their own,” she says.
One of Manning’s important takeaways is learning “you have to work on your business, not in your business,” she says. That means being willing to hand off certain tasks and projects, and today Manning is focused on the bigger picture – growing her business – while her team and husband (who left his job to become a business partner) take care of the day-to-day.
Manning is convinced her decision to let go is central to success. “If you can’t make that step, it’s almost impossible to grow.”