Mission: To duplicate her Raincoast Crisps success with a new product scheduled to launch this fall
Assets: A foundation in French cuisine and a fiercely loyal following
Yield: A pioneer and leader in the crisp bread product market with over $10 million in revenue last year and a product that has been served in the White House
By Jennifer Harrison
Since revamping her high school’s Grade 12 home economics program to include lessons in international cuisine, Lesley Stowe has been a trailblazer in Vancouver’s food scene, working to educate people on eating well and appreciating good food.
And success has followed every step of the way from starting her own catering business and amassing a loyal following to opening her eponymous gourmet foods shop and, in the last six years, scoring a hit in the food retail world with her Raincoast Crisps.
Stowe always had a keen interest in food – she started reading cookbooks when she was 10 and catered a black-tie dinner party for her parents at the age of 12 – but she never thought she was going to pursue a career in food.
However, when planning a backpacking trip through Europe after her third year at the University of British Columbia, where she studied art history, her mother suggested she stop in for a day at a family friend’s cooking school, La Varenne, while in Paris.
After spending one day at the school, Stowe was hooked.
She graduated university and returned to Paris the following year to work as a stagiere at La Varenne, where her culinary skills and passion for food were reignited with visits to the markets and private night classes with master chefs.
At 22, Stowe returned to Vancouver to teach cooking classes at a small shop in Kitsilano, but after a year was offered an opportunity to run the Salt Box, an established kitchen and catering shop, also on Vancouver’s Westside.
When the owners decided to sell the business, Stowe leveraged the Salt Box’s clientele and began her own catering business.
She worked out of her apartment and her mother’s house before ending up in a space on Commercial Drive.
On a trip to Toronto she recalls seeing companies servicing restaurants that didn’t have their own pastry chefs and correctly figured that Vancouver needed something similar.
The restaurant clientele for her dessert confections included the English Bay Café, Bishop’s and the Raintree Restaurant. For Bishop’s, Stowe created the famous Death by Chocolate, which quickly became a local hit.
In 1991, with the lease on her catering space up and seeing a need in the city for a gourmet specialty food store, she opened Lesley Stowe Fine Foods Ltd.
Inspired by stores she had seen elsewhere, like New York’s Dean and Deluca, Stowe determined to focus on selling high-quality prepared foods from around the world, including oils and vinegars and coffee and cheese, preserves and chutneys and mustards.
“A big part of it was educating the public on why they should spend this amount of money on a bottle of olive oil,” said Stowe.
The store built up a fiercely loyal following. But it was a tough business.
“With just one shop and everything being custom-made and from scratch the margins were really small. I don’t think people appreciated that.”
In 1997, Stowe went to a Fancy Food Show in New York and saw bagel chips being widely used for condiments, dips and more.
“We used to make this thing called graham bread for smoked salmon, and we sold it in the store. I thought, why don’t we take that and dry it out? We were using them for parties and putting the extra in the stores, and they were gone. We couldn’t make it fast enough.”
After successfully testing the retail market with her Raincoast Crisps at a few local shops and a store in Calgary, Stowe decided she was ready to make the leap from the retail storefront and catering business into manufacturing crisps full time.
In 2005, the business moved into a 10,000-square-foot space a couple of blocks from the old store and started production.
Stowe had created a name and a brand, and now was her opportunity to leverage it.
Soon Raincoast Crisps were in Whole Foods and Choices, and Stowe was getting requests from stores in Ontario to carry her product.
A host of copycats have followed with their own version of crisps, including an offering from Terra Breads.
Stowe is philosophical about the new competitors, noting that recipes can’t be patented or trademarked.
“[So] you always have to worry about competition, but better to have competitors that copy the product but not as well. ”
With her name on the product, Stowe says her top concern is quality.
Rhonda Pedersen, vice-president, customer services at Pedersen Event Rentals, has known and worked with Stowe for 20 years.
“She is all class, with a strong work ethic and tremendous commitment [to all her endeavours]. You would walk into the back of her store and there she was in her apron, working the big job. She handled everything personally. Her name was on the building, but you knew her name was all over the food you were eating as well. Her heart was in it.”
Six years and six flavours in, Raincoast Crisps are now available throughout the U.S., first launched through a one-year exclusive deal with Whole Foods and now with West Coast distribution through a Sacramento outfit. And with interest from stores in Europe, Asia, and even Dubai, the opportunity to take Raincoast Crisps international beckons.
But for now, Stowe is focused on building the business from home. She said initial growth of 75% in the first year and 50% in the second has levelled off at around 15% annually.
Stowe’s company moved from its original facility to a 20,000-square-foot space in Richmond a year and a half ago. It now employs 60 people. On an average day, they produce 6,000 boxes of Raincoast Crisps. The company is working on another flavour and a new product launch under the Lesley Stowe name.
Although she remains mum on what the new product might be, Stowe admitted that venturing into new arenas makes her nervous.
“I want it to be really successful. But when you’re making something on a large scale, there are so many factors involved. We can’t do it small scale. It’s a risk and financial investment, because you need to buy other equipment, and it’s not even out there yet and you’ve already put yourself out.”