For Shelina Mawani, co-founder and director of sales and marketing at Surrey-based Nana’s Kitchen, her golden ticket came in the form of a BRC Global Standards certification. The international standardization program for manufacturers allowed her food service and grocery retail business to tap into the massive U.S. ethnic-food market.
“We had started our business as Indian food, but right now we’ve positioned ourselves to be convenient comfort food with a global taste,” Mawani said. “So right now we’re doing chimichangas, we’re doing apple pies, we’re doing mexi-rice. So we’re not labelled as an Indian company anymore.”
Mawani, who started the business with her sister, Nasim Dhanji, in 2000 after a failed restaurant venture, said it wasn’t until a few years after they got their BRC certification in 2009 that they started to get noticed south of the border.
The only problem was that the Canadian dollar was on par until 2013. Now that U.S. grocery chains can buy their food for a reduced price, business has most definitely picked up, Mawani said. Nana’s Kitchen sells to Alaska, Hawaii, California and Florida, with distribution to an estimated 5,000 grocery stores in those states.
The business recently won a Surrey Board of Trade award, and a recent report titled The Specialty Food Market in North America by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada highlights the growing taste for more exotic fare that Nana’s Kitchen is catering to.
The report estimates that North America’s ethnic-food market is growing at an annual rate of 5%, and the specialty food industry in Canada grew faster than retail from 2004 to 2009, increasing 35%.
Canada’s exports to the U.S. have also been rising since 2011. In March 2016 the country sent $23.4 billion worth of domestic products, the No. 1 export being live animals and animal products, according to Statistics Canada. Vegetable products came in second with $77 million worth of domestic exports.
Mawani said she thinks part of the reason her business was successful in cracking the U.S. market was a growing trend towards more “global food palates.”
“We had a persistence,” she added.
Also, the relative novelty in the broader market of one of their signature products was a help when business started really taking off in 2013.
“Not many people were doing samosas at that time,” she said. “I think there were only two or three companies. B.C. is a very saturated market, there are like three or four hundred people doing it, so going out to other markets was so much better.”
The Surrey Board of Trade has also joined forces with the Guelph Chamber of Commerce to lobby the federal government to harmonize regulations governing trade of agri-food products between Canada and the U.S., looking to eliminate the re-inspection process.
“What this means is currently there are inspection centres conducting food product re-inspection at the U.S. border,” said Anita Huberman, CEO of the Surrey Board of Trade.
“These privately owned businesses charge exporters large fees to conduct a second inspection of the food product, rendering one of the inspections redundant.”
Huberman said as a border town, Surrey derives significant economic benefits from cross-border trade. Right now restaurants across White Rock and South Surrey are enjoying an increase in the number of U.S. customers to their establishments because of the low Canadian dollar.
Douglas Smith, executive director of the White Rock Business Improvement Association, said it’s a good sign that the Canadian food industry is thinking bigger these days.
“There’s a worldwide market out there online for businesses that have their act together and realize the sales possibilities,” he said.
“Most small businesses are focused too narrowly on their own backyard.”
Agriculture and agri-food’s place at Canada’s economic table
In 2013, the Canadian agriculture and agri-food system (AAFS) generated $106.9 billion, accounting for 6.7% of Canada’s gross domestic product (GDP). Of this, the food retail and wholesale industry accounted for the largest share (1.8%), followed by the food, beverage and tobacco processing industry (1.7%). The AAFS share of GDP has increased annually since 2007, the exception being during the economic recession of 2009.
The AAFS provides one in eight jobs in Canada, employing over 2.2 million people. The food service industry was the largest employer in the AAFS, accounting for 5.3% of all Canadian jobs.
Source: Government of Canada
