Dennis Gagnon roamed from booth to booth, sampling the flavours of food products made in Manitoba.
The quality of the samples left him with a broad smile on his face.
“There’s a strawberry ice cream topping that’s just fantastic and there’s a garlic sausage that’s out of this world,” he said.
Gagnon of Arden, Man., was among those who squeezed into a crowded room for the taste testing event, held as part of the Manitoba Direct Farm Marketing Conference in Brandon last week.
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The taste test gave Manitoba businesses a chance to showcase their products and to gather opinions on the quality of their foods as well as the packaging and trade show marketing. There were nine booths with a range of products including meats, jams and jellies, dessert toppings, fudge and baked goods.
“How much can I give you for it?” asked a woman eyeing the jars of saskatoon jam and jelly at the booth of Leslie Luhowy.
“It’s $4 a jar,” replied Luhowy, whose family diversified their farm near Rossburn by planting a saskatoon orchard 15 years ago.
Besides the jam and jelly, there also was a tray at her booth where dozens of questionnaires piled up during the taste testing. Those questionnaires gave Luhowy feedback on how much people liked her products, how much they might pay for them and how well they thought they were packaged.
Luhowy appreciated the opportunity to put her family’s products in the spotlight.
“They sell themselves,” she said. “It’s just a matter of getting people to taste them.”
At another booth, Lou Farmer was busily slicing a garlic sausage made from elk meat into bite-sized pieces. Her table was laden with samples of sausage, pepperoni, salami, smokies and a plate with roast elk meat on buns.
“It’s amazing. Oh, it’s great,” said one of the many people who stopped by Farmer’s booth to sample the variety of meats.
Farmer is a veteran when it comes to direct farm marketing. It is not for the faint of heart, she said, since there is not only the marketing but also the ongoing effort to develop unique products and to arrange the processing and packaging of the meats.
“It’s lots of work,” said Farmer. “It’s not something you don’t put a lot of effort into.”
Lee Friesen-Alford, a Manitoba Agriculture home economist who helped organize the taste test, viewed the event as a success. About 130 people visited the booths and made a dedicated effort to provide useful feedback on the food products they sampled, she said.
“I think the success was from the variety of foods we managed to get in there and from the participation of those people.”
Friesen-Alford said one of the lessons learned from seminars held as part of the direct farm marketing conference is that rural entrepreneurs wanting to develop their own food products need to build on a reputation of quality, freshness and safety.
