GUY, Alta. – Gilbert Wolfe hopes a funky looking bunny rabbit and a stand-up pouch will make his honey hop onto grocery store shelves.
Wolfe is counting on the Honey Bunny logo to give him an edge over the dozens of other containers.
“There is no edge with bulk honey,” he said.
“We were like grain farmers selling to the elevator.”
Wolfe realized two years ago that he could never be big enough to compete with cheap, imported honey flowing into Canada and driving down prices. With 5,000 hives, Wolfe Honey Co. is already the largest organic apiary in Canada, producing more than one million pounds of honey a year.
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The edge Wolfe needed was to create a value-added product to make his honey stand out.
“The reason Honey Bunny has a chance is because of its packaging.”
In 2005 Wolfe teamed up with a marketer who had worked for the Starbucks coffee chain to develop a way to sell honey.
Wolfe wanted to put the honey in a jar, but the marketer was adamant that the package be different. A type of intravenous bag, similar to those used in hospitals, was suggested.
Wolfe’s wife Sharon said they didn’t see how that could work.
“Would we have to devise some sort of stand,” she said, looking back at the original idea.
Wolfe searched the internet and found a stand-up pouch. The marketer dreamed up the Honey Bunny name and together they created a winner, he said.
“The true edge is a stand-up pouch and the Honey Bunny name,” Wolfe said from his apiary headquarters in Guy.
“Instead of being a bear or a bee or a flower, we’re a bunny.”
The first Honey Bunny pouch product was launched in January 2006. After a few modifications, the company now has four honey products: liquid and creamed organic honey and liquid and creamed natural honey that can be poured from a pouch with a screw top lid.
“It looks great on the shelf. These pouches really stand out,” Wolfe said.
When they first reached store shelves in the Guy area, schoolchildren took them to school for show and tell. Sharon said it was unique even for children raised in the Peace River region of northern Alberta, which she called the honey capital of Canada.
Since launching in local grocery stores, Wolfe has landed space in a California distribution centre, which is key to moving the honey to retailers. Another broker has plans to distribute Honey Bunny throughout Canada.
Wolfe made a presentation to Wal-Mart’s head office in Arkansas but was redirected to the Canadian headquarters. He’s now focusing on natural and organic food stores instead of the discount marketer.
Wolfe started in the bee business in 1984 with 50 hives in his father’s granary. A summer job with a local beekeeper convinced the 17 year old that bees were his destiny.
By the time he was 20, he had expanded to 300 hives and was still working out of the old wooden granary.
“All I wanted to do was run thousands of bee hives.”
Even then Wolfe looked for an edge. The apiary has been certified organic since 1997 to help get a piece of the premium European market.
In 1992, he bought a 4,000 hive apiary in Guy and jumped into honey with both feet.
With a new warehouse and fully integrated extraction, processing and packaging centre in Guy, Wolfe hopes to give his honey the extra push it needs to stand out.
“I’ve gone from a beekeeper to a food manufacturer.”
