There’s nothing new about spitting, but new flavours and innovations have kept the Spitz brand of sunflower seeds growing after 25 years.
Myles Hamilton, vice-president of Spitz International, said small changes have kept customers cracking, chewing and spitting since the business began as a bird seed company in 1982.
Spitz of Bow Island, Alta., was the first company to add flavours other than salt to the summer treat synonymous with baseball games and lazy days at the beach. Besides salted, the seeds now come in seasoned, dill pickle, hot and spicy and chili lime flavours.
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Even the resealable bag now commonplace with snack food was key to the growth of the company, said Hamilton. Before, the loose seeds often spilled and mixed with baseball equipment at the bottom of a sports bag.
The package sizes now range from small 25 cent bags aimed at the inner city neighbourhoods of Chicago, New York and Philadelphia, to a large 1.8 kilogram package available at wholesale food stores like Costco.
“The package and branding was all part of the success,” said Hamilton of the company that generated $30 million in revenue in 2006.
Founders Tom and Emmy Droog of Bow Island, Alta., were innovative from the beginning, even with the choice of seed, he added.
A good spitting seed starts with a plump sunflower easily cracked open with a roll of the tongue and crunch of the teeth.
There are more than 2,000 varieties of sunflower seeds. The seed stock used in Spitz is a Chilean variety brought to Canada to be grown on contract by farmers in Manitoba and Alberta.
About 40 farmers grow more than 10,000 acres of sunflowers for the snack food market. Each field is inspected throughout the season to ensure there are no problems with production.
“If there are any issues we’ll see it early.”
Additional seed is bought on the open market.
The sunflowers are processed and roasted at the Bow Island plant using a patented process that has changed little in 25 years. What has changed is the distribution, said Hamilton.
In Canada, the snack food company Old Dutch distributes the seed. Spitz is now the No. 1 selling brand of sunflower seeds in Canada with 75 percent of the market. In the United States, Spitz is the No. 3 sunflower seed with 10 percent of the market.
Hamilton said in the past the company had trouble breaking into the Quebec and the U.S. markets from its Alberta head office. This year the company relaunched the product in Quebec using a Quebec-based specialist to promote it.
“We made the same mistake in the U.S. We tried to sell in the U.S. from Canada and that didn’t work,” said Hamilton.
The company hired an American sales team and has seen the business grow since creating an American base.
Hamilton expects the biggest growth in the future will be in the United States. The company goal is to double its growth in three years and it is ahead of target already.
There are also international opportunities. Droog has teamed up with a Chinese partner and built a processing plant northeast of Beijing. Pumpkin seeds are grown in China and processed and cleaned in the Chinese plant before being brought back to Bow Island to be roasted, seasoned and packaged.
