Many people know how to make a delicious food product.
Most don’t know how to commercially develop it. And few know how to get it out to consumers.
That’s why Winnipeg food development consultant Susan Melnyk’s company set up the Manitoba Agri-Food Store at the city’s popular Forks Market.
“A lot of the people we did work for would get to the point where they had a terrific product, but it was sitting in their basement,” said Melnyk as she set up the store for its official opening.
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“It’s really hard to get from the product to the plate.”
Shoppers can now buy Manitoba-made candies, sunflower seeds, roasted coffee beans, Caribbean cakes and other diverse products that home entrepreneurs have developed but need to test in the market.
The store is designed to put these products in front of shoppers and see if people buy them and like them.
“It’s a place for these products to get some retail experience,” said Melnyk.
“This is a first step for people. We’re here to launch new products. It’s a way of making it easier to go from recipe to putting a product out there on the shelf.”
Some products come straight from farmers’ bright ideas. The store’s most popular product in its first days has been pesticide-free sunflower seeds produced by Manitoba farmer Justin Griffiths, who calls his company Eco-Farms.
The store also sells a saskatoon berry spread made by Tom and Kim Ritz. The Petersfield, Man., farmers call their company Prairie Lane.
To produce this product, in which saskatoon berries float uniformly throughout the liquid product without all sinking to the bottom or rising to the top, the farmers worked with Creative Solutions, a company founded and operated by Melnyk’s parents, Cheryl and Steve. They tested various formulations at the Manitoba government’s Food Development Centre in Portage la Prairie until they found a way to suspend the berries in the liquid.
That’s the kind of experience that led to the creation of the test store, Melnyk said. Steve Melnyk, a graphic designer who spent years in the packaging business, began his company six years ago to advise clients on how to best package their products. But he found most clients did not know how to fully develop or market their products. There are few brokers in Manitoba willing to take on small-scale products and try to get them into the supermarkets.
So Creative Solutions expanded its focus to help develop the product, mainly by using the Food Development Centre, and by opening a small store in the middle of Winnipeg to give the products experience with customers.
People who want to put their products in the store pay a listing fee, which helps cover the cost of the operation. Melnyk has also applied to the Manitoba government for funding. It’s a small store with only a few products, but Melnyk said it doesn’t need to move a huge volume of goods to be considered a success.
“We just want to be able to cover the costs of operating,” she said.
The goal is to see the products move out of this store and into the grocery stores.
“We want these products to grow,” said Melnyk. “We don’t want them to get to this level and stay. We hope that people like Eco-Farms can move from here to IGA and then we can start off with a new product.”
