Gravelbourg Mustard | New owners look to new marketing, distribution approaches to turn it around
A Saskatchewan gourmet mustard company is expanding and launching new products, even though it recently lost a supplier of its main ingredient.
Gravelbourg Mustard is unveiling a new label this week and another three flavours within six weeks. It is also working on national distribution.
Val Michaud and her husband, Leo, bought the European-style mustard business a year ago from the original founders. She said the loss in May of Mustard Capital, a processor that was also located in Gravelbourg, is disheartening but not devastating.
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The Michauds knew the miller was having financial difficulty and took steps before it closed.
“We bought enough product to last us a year and a half,” Michaud said.
“Their closure hasn’t really affected us.”
She finds it surprising that the province that grows 90 percent of Canada’s mustard doesn’t have a processor, but it’s not a business avenue the Mich-auds will pursue.
“Processing mustard is a big thing. You’ve got to watch the oils that are in the mustard as well as other equipment and all that. That’s nothing that we want to get into,” she said. “We want to prepare mustard and make prepared mustard and that’s it.”
The Michauds bought Gravelbourg Mustard last June and have been working to make the business better known and more available.
The label change was precipitated partly by new labelling requirements and partly by the Michauds’ desire to make the labels easier to read.
“It was very difficult to determine what flavour you actually grabbed until you brought it up and read it,” she said of the old black and gold label.
Now, the four existing flavours — French, German, saskatoon berry and cranberry — each have a white label with a feature colour. Saskatoon mustard, for example, has a purple label.
The three new flavours, which should be available by September and won’t be named until then, will have their own colours as well.
The cranberry mustard has been reformulated to prevent ingredient separation issues, which were more of a visual concern than a taste issue, Michaud said.
The mustards are now available in square jars instead of hexagon shaped jars.
A survey found consumers had difficulty getting the mustard out of all the little corners.
Michaud looked for a reasonably priced squeezable bottle but settled on a glass jar with fewer corners.
“We looked into that but at the moment, 20 grand to do a template for just a mould for a bottle was a little too much for us,” she said of a plastic container.
The Michauds can’t yet make a living just from the mustard business.
Leo still works full-time elsewhere and Val works part-time. Their staff includes two of their three children, who work part-time when the mustard is in production, which happens every two or three months per flavour depending on demand.
Just one flavour is in production at a time to prevent cross-contamination.
The Michauds have increased the batch size from 16 to 60 quarts, which can fill about 1,000 jars per day.
Neither Val nor Leo has a background in food production, but they liked the product and thought they could use their entrepreneurial spirit to take it further.
“I just see the potential in it so much and we’ve had so many comments from across Canada,” she said.
“We get e-mails from Ontario, Quebec, B.C. wondering where to purchase our product.”
They’ve even had a note from France. However, it is only available where the Michauds are able to place it until a distributor signs on. Right now that includes Saskatchewan and Alberta stores.
Gravelbourg Mustard will attend numerous trade shows across the Prairies this fall as the Michauds work to expand the market. They are also working with the Saskatchewan Trade and Export Partnership to find a distributor.
Last fall, Michaud created a cookbook featuring mustard in the recipes. She said consumers have to be educated about how to use mustard, and many chefs are now using it in all kinds of meals.
“It isn’t just a condiment,” she said. “Mustard is a binder, so it holds food together.”
Some of those uses will be featured at the Great Saskatchewan Mustard Festival in Regina Sept. 16, which the Michauds plan to attend.
