Nana’s Kitchen develops a taste profile for a bigger market
‘COMFORT FOOD’ COMPANY HAS FIRM FOUNDATION TO TAKE IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL
WhensistersShelinaMawani and Nasim Dhanji started a small restaurant in 1998, they had no idea they were embarking on a partnership that would lead to selling food their mother used to make right across North America.
After opening Nana’s Kitchen as a restaurant, the sisters decided to give their dream of running a food manufacturing plant a shot, and turned their focus solely to producing handmade samosas and other Indian foods.
Now Surrey-based Nana’s Kitchen, with a staff of around 38 new Canadian women in production ,along with men and women in administration, produces between 20,000 and 25,000 handmade pastries every day and is in the process of launching a line of comfort foods.
“We never even thought about where we’d be when we started the restaurant, or how much we’d grow,” said Mawani, whose family is originally from Tanzania. “Now we have a vision.”
“The samosa market is very small,” said Mawani, the director of sales and marketing. “To capture more market share we’ve become a company that does conventional comfort food for global tastes.”
In April, the sisters added three new products to their food line to launch their Convenient Comfort Foods brand. Homestyle Chicken Dinner Pockets are made with dark meat, cranberry and sage stuffing. British-style beef pockets are like a small version of a shepherd’s pie. And Granny Smith apple pie is just what it sounds like, with cinnamon and a bit of sugar.
The products are all wrapped in pastry and have been made to meet nutritional regulations for restaurants, grocery stores and everything from schools to senior living centres.
Nana’s Kitchen is planning to launch three more products in the coming months and hoping to increase top-line growth by 20 per cent this year. What’s their secret? Mawani and Dhanji, the president, approached Vancouver-based The Fresh Group, a collective of brand specialists and business strategists, to help them rebrand and restructure their company.
The Fresh Group looks at everything from profit and loss statements and organizational structure and polices, does market research on food trends, R&D on new food recipes, branding of products and overall company rebranding, including the website and logos www.thefreshgroup.ca.
The two companies started working together at the beginning of the year and The Fresh Group forged ahead with research and development plans.
“We wanted to go into the second quarter with brand new products on the market,” said Sally Claire, chief executive officer of The Fresh Group. “It was an intense and deliberate goal.”
Nana’s Kitchen had already established itself with sales to grocery stores and food services in North America. As it grew over the years, the company got its Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) certification and its Canadian Food Inspection Agency-approved facility also qualified for the British Retail Consortium’s Global Standard for Food Safety.
That meant the company had a firm foundation to take it to the next level.
The Fresh Group worked with Nana’s Kitchen to come up with a plan and one simple question became their guide.
“What did your Nana make that made you feel you’d had a special meal?” Claire asked, noting that comfort foods are eaten at home 96.2 per cent of the time and that 127 new comfort foods came on to the market in Canadian grocery stores last year.
With that established, the search for ingredients got underway and the cooking began.
The Fresh Group tried different recipes in their test kitchen and worked with Nana’s Kitchen to see what would be best for the sisters’ company.
“The Fresh Group has worked side by side with Nana’s Kitchen staff to create a shared vision for the new company Brand and products, right down to the product names,” Claire said.
Mawani said it’s been a thorough and exciting process to work with Sally and The Fresh Group and see the results!
She recently took the new products to the National Restaurant Association show in Chicago and they are about to move into the New York market as well.
“We want to be comfort foods brand that serves happy memories of home style meals to global consumers,” Mawani said. “This is a very special moment for us. We’ve come so far and it’s our team and partners who have made our success possible.”