Cricket farm lands deal with Loblaw’s
Entomo Farms raises insects as food
NORWOOD — He’s the president of the company but was reluctant to sample the merchandise.
The business breeds millions of crickets that are ground up in a processor and turned into powder for people to cook and bake with. But months after launching Entomo Farms with his two brothers in 2014, Jarrod Goldin was the only one who hadn’t tasted crickets or mealworms.
While Ryan and Darren were snacking on the insects and using them as ingredients in their food, Jarrod couldn’t get used to the idea. And that started to make him uncomfortable. After all, how could he be one of the faces of the business having not consumed his own product?
“I couldn’t be in a situation where someone asked me if I’d tried (bugs) and I answered no,” he says. “It was time for me to grow up and give it a shot.” One day, in a car with his brothers after a business meeting, he decided to wing it, so to speak. He bit into some honey-mustard-seasoned crickets.
“It wasn’t a weird, out-of-this-world, nasty experience,” he recalls. “It was quite lovely.”
Bugs are a staple in the Goldin brothers’ diets. Jarrod, 48, Darren, 46, and Ryan, 43, mix them into meals they prepare for themselves and their children and in dishes they bring to potluck dinner parties with friends.
The brothers run a sprawling operation near Peterborough, that looks from the outside like a conventional farm that would
house chickens and cows.
But inside, crickets are the order of the day.
Now this meal option will be available across Canada, as Loblaws agreed in March to stock the farm’s cricket powder under its President’s Choice label.
For some customers it could mean a strawberry and banana smoothie flavoured with the earthy, nutlike taste of cricket powder. Instead of a brownie square, a chocolate- and coconut-covered bar made with cricket powder?
While making money is part of their plan, the Goldins say they have an additional goal in mind — mass-producing sustainable food loaded with nutrients like protein and vitamins to help customers live longer, healthier lives.
The financial terms of the Loblaws deal aren’t being disclosed, but a spokesperson for the grocer says the company is pleased with how customers are responding.
For the uninitiated, overcoming the “disgust factor” of eating bugs is simply a matter of reorienting one’s thinking, the Goldin brothers say. “My argument is (we need to) change the paradigm of what’s considered icky food,” says Jarrod, a trained chiropractor. “Icky food gives you diabetes, cancer, makes you obese. Good food helps you live longer, prevents heart disease and gives you energy.”
The brothers began their operation with a $50,000 loan from an investor and 10,000 crickets they purchased from a farm in Georgia in 2013. They’ve since bred hundreds of millions of crickets.
Entomo Farms in Norwood, about two hours northeast of Toronto, is an operation about the size of a CFL field that includes three buildings with grow rooms, incubation areas and nurseries for crickets. It’s where the bugs feed, mate and produce hatchlings.
In a separate location the brothers breed mealworms, a type of tiny worm that has a similar nutritional profile to crickets.
The sheer volume of insects in these rooms is a bit overwhelming at first, says Tara Chamberlain, 35, of Norwood, a barn supervisor who began working at Entomo Farms three years ago.
“But once you’re used to it, it just becomes commonplace, “she says.
Markets include Canada, the U.S., New Zealand, South Africa, Europe and Mexico. While Canada and the U.S. are fledgling markets, whether it’s beetle larvae that tribes in Africa and Australia consume for subsistence, or popular crispy fried locusts and beetles eaten in Thailand, it’s estimated that about two billion people eat insects.
Aside from the President’s Choice powder, the brothers also sell whole crickets and mealworms under their Entomo Farms brand online and in a few small-market grocery stores.
Darren Goldin says his company’s big breakthrough with Loblaws was assisted by the owner of Neal Brothers Foods, a Richmond Hill-based company that sells typical snack food products to Loblaws.
Peter Neal, one of the owners, took an interest in the Goldin brothers’ product and introduced them to Loblaws in 2016.
Loblaws is carrying the cricket powder nationally, in almost
1,100 stores across Canada. The 113-gram bags retail for $13.99.
“Sustainable protein” is something the grocery chain cares about and something customers have asking for, says Loblaws spokesperson Kathlyne Ross.