On this episode of The Food Professor podcast, my co-host Dr. Sylvain Charlebois and I unpack the sweet and sour of the latest news that’s shaping the Canadian food landscape. We also sit down with a very special guest, Michael Graydon, President of Food Health and Consumer Products of Canada to talk about the latest in sustainability and trends in part one of a two part interview.
On this episode of The Food Professor podcast, my co-host Dr. Sylvain Charlebois and I unpack the sweet and sour of the latest news that’s shaping the Canadian food landscape. We also sit down with a very special guest, Michael Graydon, President of Food Health and Consumer Products of Canada to talk about the latest in sustainability and trends in part one of a two part interview.
The Food Professor is brought to you by omNovos - THE digital customer engagement solution for grocery and restaurant marketers helping you deliver personalized and segmented experiences at scale. Find out how you can get personal and grow sales by making EVERY customer interaction count with omNovos at www.realcustomerengagement.com
As drought hits the Canadian Prairies, Sylvain expresses his expansive concerns regarding North America’s water under the reality of the climate crisis. On the flip side, we talk about the latest promising agriculture innovations from biotech farming to McCain Foods’ recent commitment to regenerative agriculture practices.
From Christmas in July to chicken crises, Sylvain and I reflect on new alternatives to long-standing classics and the grim consequences of the supply chain issue faced by poultry processing plants. We cover the future of lab-grown meats and Sylvain explains just how this chicken processing plant issue happens.
Finally - is Newfoundland’s sugar tax as sweet as some advocates think? Sylvain talks about the successes and failures of sugar taxes around the world and methods for discouraging the consumption of sugary beverages.
As proud sponsors of The Retail Council of Canada’s 28th Grand Prix New Product Awards, we take a moment to celebrate the innovation that we saw and continue to see across the Grand Prix finalists and winners. We talk about highlights from this year’s gala and our predictions for next year’s line-up. Stay tuned for more interviews with finalists.
Michael Graydon
Michael is an accomplished CEO, with experience in both the public and private sectors. A proven brand builder with a history of generating compelling strategies generating significant top and bottom line growth. He has an extremely well defined ability to understand and serve consumer markets with improved and innovative products and services. Michael is a passionate leader, visionary and very creative in his approach to creating a very strong corporate culture and employee engagement.
Michael is the CEO of Food, Health & Consumer Products of Canada (FHCP), formerly Food & Consumer Products of Canada (FCPC). Under his leadership, FCPC merged with Consumer Health Products of Canada (CHP) in September 2020. FHCP is the voice of Canada’s leading food, health, and consumer products manufacturers. Our industry employs more people than any other manufacturing sector in Canada, across businesses of all sizes that manufacture and distribute the safe, high-quality products at the heart of healthy homes, healthy communities, and a healthy Canada.
Under his leadership, Food & Consumer Products of Canada merged with Consumer Health Products of Canada in September 2020 to create Food, Health & Consumer Products of Canada.
As President of Parq Holdings Michael was responsible for the oversight and strategic business development plans for the development of the new Parq Resort in Vancouver. Mr. Graydon joined PHLP in 2014 after six years at BCLC where he led that company to become a recognized leader in the gambling and entertainment industry worldwide and was instrumental in the launch of the first regulated on-line gaming site in North America. Previously, Mr. Graydon held several senior roles in large corporations including Canada’s largest retail buying company Mega Group, food manufacturer J.D. Sweid, food retailer Sobeys, The Keg Restaurants and Carling O'Keefe Breweries. His community commitments have included his role on the Advisory Board of the School of Business and Economics at Thompson Rivers University; the Board of Directors of the Interprovincial Lottery Corporation and the Board of Directors of Brand Source USA. He has also served as Vice Chair of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and was the Co-Chair of the 2014 Grey Cup in Vancouver.
Michael LeBlanc is the Founder & President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc and a Senior Advisor to Retail Council of Canada as part of his advisory and consulting practice. He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience, and has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career. Michael is the producer and host of a network of leading podcasts including Canada’s top retail industry podcast, The Voice of Retail, plus Global E-Commerce Tech Talks and The Food Professor with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois. You can learn more about Michael here or on LinkedIn.
Sylvain Charlebois
Dr. Sylvain Charlebois is a Professor in food distribution and policy in the Faculties of Management and Agriculture at Dalhousie University in Halifax. He is also the Senior Director of the Agri-food Analytics Lab, also located at Dalhousie University. Before joining Dalhousie, he was affiliated with the University of Guelph’s Arrell Food Institute, which he co-founded. Known as “The Food Professor”, his current research interest lies in the broad area of food distribution, security and safety. Google Scholar ranks him as one of the world's most cited scholars in food supply chain management, food value chains and traceability.
He has authored five books on global food systems, his most recent one published in 2017 by Wiley-Blackwell entitled “Food Safety, Risk Intelligence and Benchmarking”. He has also published over 500 peer-reviewed journal articles in several academic publications. Furthermore, his research has been featured in several newspapers and media groups, including The Lancet, The Economist, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, BBC, NBC, ABC, Fox News, Foreign Affairs, the Globe & Mail, the National Post and the Toronto Star.
Dr. Charlebois sits on a few company boards, and supports many organizations as a special advisor, including some publicly traded companies. Charlebois is also a member of the Scientific Council of the Business Scientific Institute, based in Luxemburg. Dr. Charlebois is a member of the Global Food Traceability Centre’s Advisory Board based in Washington DC, and a member of the National Scientific Committee of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) in Ottawa.
Michael LeBlanc
Welcome to The Food Professor podcast episode 28. I'm Michael LeBlanc.
Sylvain Charlebois
And I'm Sylvain Charlebois,
Michael LeBlanc
The Food Professor is brought to you by omNovos, the digital customer engagement solution for grocery and restaurant marketers, helping you deliver personalized and segmented experiences at scale. Find out how you can get personal and grow sales by making every customer interaction count with omNovos at realcustomerengagement.com.
Alright, Sylvain, great episode, lots to chat about, and a very special guest, Michael Graydon, President of FHCP, I got to get used to saying that, new organization. We, he talks about that in the interview. Food Health and Consumer Products of Canada, which is really a bement, behemoth right. They represent a wide swath of things that are on shelves, and sold, and manufactured, or imported.
We'll get to that interview in a bit. Actually, we're going to have a two-part episode, so to speak, with Michael. We, we had a lot of great discussions about a wide variety of issues. He's got a fascinating background, he talks about the issues that are, that are, his members are dealing with. We talk about sustainability. We talked about the code of conduct. We talk about trends, and really, we got a lot to work with. So, we're gonna break that into two different episodes. So, part-one is today, part-two,
Sylvain Charlebois
Yeah,
Michael LeBlanc
Will be our next episode. And listen, great virtual gala last week, the Canadian Grand Prix New Product Prize Award, which we sponsored.
Sylvain Charlebois
You look good, Michael, you look good.
Michael LeBlanc
Well, thank you. Anyway, you know, we, we had several bonus episodes where we interviewed finalists, and some of those finalists actually took home the hardware. I think about,
Sylvain Charlebois
Yes,
Michael LeBlanc
Reynolds. I think about Sobeys. I think about Hardbite Chips.
Sylvain Charlebois
Yeah, Longos.
Michael LeBlanc
I think about,
Sylvain Charlebois
Yeah,
Michael LeBlanc
Nutrameltz, who was just on,
Sylvain Charlebois
Yeah,
Michael LeBlanc
Longos, our listeners haven't heard the Longos interview yet. So, we do have more
Sylvain Charlebois
Yeah,
Michael LeBlanc
Interviews that are actually recorded, and more to come up. So, we'll have lots of bonus episodes, and interviews all through the summer. We're going to take a bit of a hiatus you and I. Anyway,
Sylvain Charlebois
I must admit, I was a little disappointed to see LeClare, not win, unfortunately. Cuz I really, I fell in love with the product. My family,
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah,
Sylvain Charlebois
Has fallen in love with, with their, with their gold products. So, it was unfortunate. But you know, I was, I was a little biased, but I was happy with all the winners. Great innovation, I'm really looking forward to next year. And, and frankly, I was proud to be part of it as a sponsor and, and to see you on air, you know, talking about what we do. And, that we,
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah,
Sylvain Charlebois
Try to promote innovation as best as we can.
Michael LeBlanc
Any trends in the winners, like if you if you assume that the judges are all kind of representation of both the industry and people, did anything jump out at you as a trend overall, from the products either submitted or those that, those that were winners.
Sylvain Charlebois
You know, it's, there seems to be a lot with innovation sometimes, you're, you're surprised because maybe judges, I felt that judges were looking for traditional sort of solutions, I guess, with, with the convenience. But, what I've, what I've also noticed is that most of these companies have invested years and years of research and development to come up with these products like, Nestle, a non-food,
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah,
Sylvain Charlebois
Product, the Nestle went 10 years, 10 years to actually,
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah,
Sylvain Charlebois
Come up with the product, and to win was probably just overwhelming for the company. So, you know, it was great. And, hearing the stories, even though the gala was virtual, I mean, hearing those stories behind the creation of these products was also very amazing. But, that's, that's what innovation is all about, right? You have to think it's like developing cars, you have to think three years ahead, four years ahead,
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah,
Sylvain Charlebois
Where the market is going to be. The plant-based space right now, I suspect that within the next 12 months to two years, we're going to see way more innovation. In fact, I would say that the 29th edition of the Grand Prix, I think we're gonna see way more plant-based products and,
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah,
Sylvain Charlebois
Judges will have a hard time selecting the best.
Michael LeBlanc
Well, and it was a Longos, I believe that won for their plant-based burger, if I,
Sylvain Charlebois
Yeah,
Michael LeBlanc
My memory. And, we got a great interview with Jenny Longo coming up talking about how they approach private label. So, lots of great stuff coming up.
Let's jump into some of the issues that we want to talk about. The drought on the prairies. You know, there,
Sylvain Charlebois
Yeah,
Michael LeBlanc
Seems to be some really, some really tough weather. We've talked about the effects of weather on our food supply, but to talk about what your observations are about what's happening out there.
Sylvain Charlebois
I gotta tell you, I'm really concerned about water, in general, in North America, California is having already some issues, in the prairies, it's a dry June, June. In Quebec soils are very, very dry as well. There's not a lot of moisture. Now. I'm here in Halifax where it's been raining forever. Some days I feel like I had to go out and build an ark, but, but it,
Michael LeBlanc
All the rain, all the rain in the wrong place, right. All the rain, too much rain in the wrong place.
Sylvain Charlebois
And this is what climate change is all about. You know, you basically will have millimeters of rain in one area, but it's not really covering a whole lot. And some places are really affected by dryness. And, this is really what, what I, in Canada, we need to focus more on, well, okay, climate change is a reality, how do we mitigate against the effects of climate change. And it has a lot to do with capital and investments. Out in the prairies, you see a lot of farmers who invested in, in really high tech irrigation systems, and sometimes, in some sectors, and I'm not going to name any sector in particular, but sometimes the knee jerk reaction is to go into some sort of trouble because of Mother Nature and ask for a cheque from the government. Well, that's not sustainable anymore. You have to think strategically,
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah,
Sylvain Charlebois
About your business. So, and I'm thinking about, you know, control environment agriculture, with greenhouses, vertical farms. We have to think about sophisticated irrigation systems, things like that. I don't think we've actually taken water all that seriously, as an issue, in North America, not just Canada, North America, and I don't, I think it's going to be a growing problem.
Michael LeBlanc
I remember our guest Cherilyn Jolly-Nagel talking about how she used drones and water sensing technology to, to understand precisely where and what part of her fields needed water. So, that's clearly a solution. She's clearly invested in that sophisticated control of, of the elements.
Sylvain Charlebois
And we've talked a lot about food autonomy in Canada, and certainly,
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah,
Sylvain Charlebois
What you put in the soil, how you make things work, really, inputs are critical for agriculture. And,
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah,
Sylvain Charlebois
So, I think we need to have a serious conversation about that. You can always, you know, spend a few millions on, on, you know, high tech, grocery stores or flashy things. But, it really boils down to agriculture. And if you don't have a strong agricultural sector, you don't have much to rely on,
Michael LeBlanc
You don't have security. And, you reminded me on the weekend I watched Percy, we talked about it on an earlier episode,
Sylvain Charlebois
Yeah,
Michael LeBlanc
Percy Schmeiser movie about genetic, genetically modified corn or, that was, you know, roundup resilient, but also, you know, for some of it is also drought resilient. So, I just want to mention I saw it. I know you knew Percy passed away last year.
Sylvain Charlebois
Did you enjoy the movie?
Michael LeBlanc
I did. You know, I'm a big, I'm a big fan of the actors and I thought it was an interesting movie. You know that it was a little bit over rot sometimes, the dark menacing bans following the farmers kind of thing.
Sylvain Charlebois
Monsanto, Monsanto.
Michael LeBlanc
Monsanto is you know, that was a bit over-bearing but you know, I thought it was good. I thought it's a very valid discussion.
Sylvain Charlebois
Did he actually shoot people, Monsanto? Or, because in the clip, like in the trailer, you see Percy with a gun. So, but I don't know,
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah, in the clip, it was some Monsanto folks on his land taking measurements and he kind,
Sylvain Charlebois
That's right.
Michael LeBlanc
Of said, get off my land. So, there was never any gunplay. But, but it was you know, it's fairly dramatic. It's a very interesting story. And, and I'd encourage any one of the listeners it's now out on DVD or on the streaming services.
Sylvain Charlebois
It's a divisive issue in the prairie.
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah,
Sylvain Charlebois
Of course,
Michael LeBlanc
I didn't appreciate, I did not appreciate as much, I think it'd be interesting for you to watch it because you really had farmer against farmer. Like, there was a really,
Sylvain Charlebois
Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah, a lot of farmers did not appreciate what Percy did. Absolutely not. Absolutely.
Michael LeBlanc
That rang out, like it was Percy against the world.
Sylvain Charlebois
Yeah,
Michael LeBlanc
In the movie so,
Sylvain Charlebois
He fought for something and, and I honestly, I was, I've always said to farmers, you know, you can be supportive what Percy is trying to achieve. You got to admire his persistence. You got to admire his, his vision. He believed in something.
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah,
Sylvain Charlebois
He believed that, that really companies shouldn't be owning agriculture.
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah,
Sylvain Charlebois
And, and so that's, that was his, his approach to his death. And so, I do admire Percy. I honestly did not agree with him. I actually believe in, in biotechnology. I believe in this relationship between farmers and the bio-techs. But, he didn't and, but he, and he fought for it.
Michael LeBlanc
Let's talk about this regenerative agriculture. It's a term I'd never heard before suddenly pops up on the news seems,
Sylvain Charlebois
You have not.
Michael LeBlanc
To be a thing. I'd not, I'd never heard of that term before. I, or if I heard of it I just thought it was a another way of saying organic. McCain's seems to think it's a big deal. It's all new to me. Tell, tell us all about regenerative,
Sylvain Charlebois
I mean,
Michael LeBlanc
Regenerative agriculture.
Sylvain Charlebois
It's been around for a while, but it became more popular maybe about 10 years ago. And, the attempt was to push aside the organic cult. You know, because organic growing was always seen as a marginal movement, right. And, I think a lot of people agree that you can't really feed the world by solely growing organic.
But, they wanted to figure out a way to make the model more appealing, and scalable, really. And so, regenerative agriculture is all about how you manage resources responsibly. And, it's based on principles. And, that's when things get a little bit unclear, at least to me. Depending on who you ask, they'll tell you different principles. So, regenerative agriculture really is defined by how you see it. In fact, I just wrote a piece on, on McCain's commitment to regenerative agriculture. And, I just got a response from McCain this morning. And, they, they read my piece and they agreed 100% with my piece, saying I think McCain's call to commit to regenerative agriculture is not necessarily about, you know, focusing on, on (inuadible) and changing everything, forcing farmers to follow a more bureaucratic model. It's more, I think about getting people on board. Within nine years, I mean, all countries, including here will have to adhere to specific United Nations goals, sustainable goals, and there's going to be a summit this summer. And, I think that the private sector is expected to come up with some sort of, with some solutions. And, that's why the 2030 date comes up a lot.
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah, I was wondering where that came from. Yeah.
Sylvain Charlebois
Yeah. And, and that's exactly what McCain is doing, is basically, and McCain is very good at working the supply chain, one of the best in the country.
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah, absolutely.
Sylvain Charlebois
And so, I think what, what's going on with McCain is that it's, it's a bit of a call to its suppliers saying, 'These are the things that we're gonna have to focus on over the next little while'. But, but right, right now, all we see is a commitment towards regenerative agriculture without metrics. So, it's still fuzzy right now. So, they have nine years to agree on a specific, measurable goals,
Michael LeBlanc
Right,
Sylvain Charlebois
Which we don't have
Michael LeBlanc
Right,
Sylvain Charlebois
Right now.
Michael LeBlanc
Okay, well, it was new to me. So, and I'll put a link in the show notes to, to your article because you, you've talked about it in greater depth and other issues surrounding it. So, it is a nice piece,
Sylvain Charlebois
It is, a lot of people are very critical of regenerative agriculture. But, in recent months, we've seen several CPG companies commit to regenerative agriculture. Pepsi, General Mills, and now McCain. McCain is the first Canadian one to do that. And, that's why people are wondering, okay, I, we thought this was about tree hugging and granola crunching. So, what's going on here? Well, it's more about. It's more, it's more about focusing on the big picture, really, I think.
Michael LeBlanc
Oh Interesting. All right, well, I, it sounds like it's going to be a topic for us to discuss in the future as well. So, thank you for, for introducing it.
Let's talk turkey. So, I love turkey. My wife and I are you know, we disagree, we agree on many, many things after being married for 25 years, obviously. We disagree on two things, how often to drink champagne. I think every day and she likes to reserve it for special occasions,
Sylvain Charlebois
You will drink champagne every day?
Michael LeBlanc
I would drink it every day. I would have a glass of champagne every day.
Sylvain Charlebois
What's special about that?
Michael LeBlanc
Well, every day with my wife is a special occasion, right?
Sylvain Charlebois
Oh, whatever.
Michael LeBlanc
And we disagree on how often to eat turkey. I love turkey. I'd like, I'd love to eat it more often than you know, Christmas,
Sylvain Charlebois
It's great meat,
Michael LeBlanc
and Easter
Sylvain Charlebois
It's great meat,
Michael LeBlanc
And it's, so, we, I created a holiday in our household, Christmas in July. So, on the 25th of July, we cele, we dec, we dec out the backyard like it's Christmas and we have a nice turkey. Where am I going with this? Why am I telling you this?
Sylvain Charlebois
I thought you were going to say festivus for the rest of us but, save that for another show
Michael LeBlanc
It starts with the airing of the grievances. Which I think I can get to a little bit later in this episode. But, I'm wondering if my turkeys gonna come from a lab? We've talked about lab grown products before but it seems like turkey from a lab? Like it, is this really expanding? It feels like there's some momentum behind this lab grown. This lab grown product talk about it.
Sylvain Charlebois
There's momentum and cash. Yeah, a lot of non ag investors are looking at, at lab grown whatever. Essentially because, I mean the, the carbon footprint argument is very strong. There's no blood. You basically extracts themselves from, from a healthy animal, no pain. And, and you can actually produce all you want without the mortgage, without mortgaging Mother Nature and natural resources.
Now, Singapore has approved the commercialized, commercialization of chicken, we spoke about that.
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah,
Sylvain Charlebois
I believe in December. We are expecting more. I'm expecting that lab grown meat will be commercialize legally in the United States by the end of 2022.
Michael LeBlanc
Wow, that's next year.
Sylvain Charlebois
Yeah.
Michael LeBlanc
Wow.
Sylvain Charlebois
And it will, it could likely happen in Canada by 2025.
Michael LeBlanc
Wow,
Sylvain Charlebois
The reason why it may be a little bit slower in Canada, other than the politics, of course, is the fact that there's, there's plenty of land here. There's no rush. I mean, we,
Michael LeBlanc
Right,
Sylvain Charlebois
Have farms and,
Michael LeBlanc
Unlike Singapore, right, right. You made that point in Singapore,
Sylvain Charlebois
Singapore has no land. So, their, their farms are labs. And so, I actually get i. And they and they want 30% of the meat consumed in the country to be produced in the country. Well, how do you do that? Essentially, you have to,
Michael LeBlanc
You grow it.
Sylvain Charlebois
Allow labs to grow. But, here's the kicker when it comes to prices. Back in 2013, when that one guy ate this lab grown meat, it was a steak of about 140 grams. It, the cost to produce that, that piece of meat was well over 285,000 euros, okay. To produce that same piece of meat today would cost you about $5 US.
Michael LeBlanc
Wow, wow, wow. So that,
Sylvain Charlebois
I don't think people have actually realized how,
Michael LeBlanc
No,
Sylvain Charlebois
Shifted so much.
Michael LeBlanc
No, not at all.
Sylvain Charlebois
So, when you think about affordability, and we've been talking about food prices a lot, and we're going to be seeing in plant-base, by the way, I suspect by next year, most plant-based products will be cheaper than the actual real animal protein stuff.
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah, pricing has been all over the map and the price, in the plant-based stuff, right, we've talked about that as well.
Sylvain Charlebois
There's gonna be, I would say this fall, we're expecting many new products to enter the Canadian market. That's going to put some pressure on, you know, products like beyond meat and everything else, and prices will drop.
Lab grown stuff will come in a little bit later. But, I do expect, now people will concern about animal welfare, people concerned about the environment, the case is pretty strong. That's why investors are really parking a lot of money. We actually are expecting, based on a polar Risk Report that I read recently, we are expecting the lab grown sector at wholesale to be worth about 400 million US dollars by 2025. So, it's pretty, it's kind of exciting. And of course, nobody really knows how it tastes. I certainly don't know. But, the texture should be the same. You can do, if you think about how powerful that concept can be, like think about people who are anemic, people who are diabetic, you can basically design your own piece of food for your own personal physiological needs.
Michael LeBlanc
Well, all right, that's as good a segue as we're going to get. So, let's bring on our guest Michael Graydon, for the first part of a two-part interview.
Michael, welcome to The Food Professor podcast. How are you doing this morning?
Michael Graydon
Doing awesome. Thank you very much for inviting me. It's looking forward to the conversation with the both of you this morning.
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah, well, thanks again for joining us. And Sylvain, you know Michael well. We're all kind of players in the industry at some point, yeah.
Sylvain Charlebois
Yeah, absolutely have a lot of respect for Michael. I'll just pretend he's not in a room right now with us. But he's, I think he's a great leader. And he's, he's helped the industry, the processing industry, and it needed help. So, I do want to congratulate Michael for, for the leadership he has provided for the sector.
Michael LeBlanc
Well, let's get in and talk about the sector and the leadership. But first, let's, let's talk about you, Michael. Tell us about yourself, your background, and your role, I've called it at the newly formed FHCP, Food Health and Consumer Products of Canada. Give us a bit of the background on that. But first of all, tell us about yourself.
Michael Graydon
Yeah, no, I've had a very, I would have to suggest, very privileged career. I've worked in some really phenomenal industries. When, I came out of university back in the late 70s, went right into the beer business. And what a dream for a young man coming out of university to work in the beer,
Sylvain Charlebois
Yeah,
Michael Graydon
Business and it was phenomenal. And, I worked in promotion, sales, sales management, brand management and what an incredible learning experience. And you know, it was back in the day where there was no pricing. It was all controlled by Government. We were launching brands left, right and center. We moved while I was there from the stubby bottle to tall necks and,
Michael LeBlanc
I missed those. I missed those.
Michael Graydon
I know,
Sylvain Charlebois
Oh yeah,
Michael LeBlanc
I think, you know, my dad used to drink a beer from Labatt called IPA.
Michael Graydon
Yep.
Michael LeBlanc
And it was just, it wasn't the greatest beer in the world. But you know why he started drinking it is because they, they gave him cases of it when he was in the Korean War.
Michael Graydon
Yeah.
Michael LeBlanc
And he never, talked about branding and influence.
Sylvain Charlebois
He got hooked, yeah,
Michael LeBlanc
I never, he never, never drank until they discontinued it. And then you know, sometimes he had to suffer through him saying every now and then. But,
Michael Graydon
No, it was, it was a great world. But, it you know, I was there for quite a long period of time. But, it was time to move on that I really got the bug for advertising when I was a brand manager at, in the beer business and moved over to the agency side. And I had two clients at the agency that I worked for, Heineken Amstel, and McDonald's. Restaurants of Canada. So, like, talk about iconic brands, and it was just a tremendous experience. And man, the stuff I learned from the McDonald's folks was a just an incredible group of people over there in the marketing department. And, we did some really cool things.
Left there and moved from Toronto, after you know, being a born and bred fourth generation Torontonian moved to Vancouver and got into the restaurant business and worked for a large chain out in the West Coast and handled marketing and business development, franchising for them.
And then, moved the family, put them on an airplane went all the way to Stellarton, Nova Scotia, and moved into the grocery business. Worked for Sobeys as their Senior Vice President of Marketing. And, I ran their private label business for a number of years and had the, the experience of going through the acquisition of offshore foods and the integration of that into the Sobeys organization. And so again, you know, phenomenal learning experience, it was very interesting, because back then in the day, those Sobeys is still fundamentally a family business it was much more family run. Many of the Sobeys' family were in operational roles. And so, it was very different than it is today. But you know, it was a cool organization and quite a transition moving from White Rock, British Columbia to Stellarton, Nova Scotia.
Sylvain Charlebois
No kidding.
Michael Graydon
But all good, you know, we, we enjoyed it. I think the family, I moved to teenagers, which was interesting, because they did not want to leave British Columbia. But they did, obviously. And, when it was time to move back to BC, they didn't want to leave Nova Scotia. So, they made some great friends and enjoyed the lifestyle out there. But, so it all worked out well.
And then I went into the food manufacturing business and ran an organization in Vancouver that primarily supplied the grocers with private label products, mainly in the chicken and beef side, as well as the food service industry. Did a lot of work with A&W and, and Wendy's, which was pretty exciting. And we sort of did some pretty interesting things there. But, it also gave me some interesting perspective. You know, moving from being in the grocery side where you're the buyer to the manufacturing side, where you are the seller, so it gave me some really significant dimensions on both sides of the spectrum as it relates to the relationship with grocery.
And then moved in, I became the CEO of an organization that was a buying group for independent furniture appliance and consumer electronics stores. We represented about 800 retailers across the country and,
Michael LeBlanc
Is this the Mega Group?
Michael Graydon
Yeah,
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah, yeah, I know, the Mega Group, sure, sure.
Michael Graydon
Did some really amazing things there and we had a lot of fun. I think we just grew that business in the 7 years that I was there and sort of really expanded it. It was a lot of fun, a great team. But, you know, it was based in Saskatoon, and we had our Merchandising offices in Toronto and we had offices in Montreal for all of our sort of marketing stuff. I was on a plane 265 days a year.
Michael LeBlanc
Wow.
Michael Graydon
I was also the Vice Chair of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce at the time. And so, doing some work with them and traveling and we were engaged with a group called Brand Source in the United States, which was a large buying group and I was on their board. I just hit the wall. I just couldn't do it anymore.
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah,
Michael Graydon
And, I hated to leave the organization because the people were great. The retailers were great, but it just, it was just killing me. And, I've just said it's time I've got to sort of change the lifestyle a little bit from a travel and became the CEO of a large crown corporation in British Columbia that generated about $2.6 billion in revenue. We had over 1000 employees and had a lot of fun there did some innovative stuff and, and then ended up at FHCP or I guess at the time it was FCPC.
And, you know, when you kind of look back on the career between sort of beer, advertising, grocery retail, food manufacturing, other senses of retail, you know, working in a crown corporation and having an understanding of, of government, it was just sort of that perfect pathway in regards to preparing me for the job that I've now had for the last five years, representing one of the largest manufacturing sectors in the country, so it's,
Michael LeBlanc
I was gonna, I was gonna say, I mean, the transition, you know, associations often have two styles or two types of leaders, one that's very steeped in the industry itself, and others sometimes choose one who's very steeped in government, right. Depending on the,
Michael Graydon
Yeah,
Michael LeBlanc
On their experience in lobbying. You, what kind of transition was that? Because you were in government, so, I guess that was your leap into understanding the inner workings of government, but it's different being an advocate, right? I mean, that's a different, that's a different role. How was that transition for you?
Michael Graydon
Well, it was pretty good. I think the only, the only challenge I had in moving to a not for profit, which we are, is that my whole brain is conditioned around metrics and KPIs related to performance and,
Sylvain Charlebois
Right,
Michael Graydon
You know, with, with advocacy, you know, we just finished negotiations here in Ontario, and the blue box and new regulations. It's been 10 years in the making.
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah,
Michael Graydon
So, you have to learn to acquaint yourself differently. So, I sort of sat the team down and said, for my own sanity, we need to create some metrics. And I said, 'How about its growth in the organization? its membership',
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah.
Michael Graydon
And, you know, I think that there is a significant amount of small to medium manufacturing enterprises out there that need our support, let's, let's build a business development plan. So, in the last four to five years, we've added almost 65 new members to the organization. So, it gave me something to sort of grasp on to, is in its growth, and its retention. So, it's one,
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah,
Michael Graydon
Thing to get them, it's another thing to keep them and create the value that's necessary to be able to keep them. So, that transition was fine. One of the things that our organization is different than most is that a lot of the associations in our sector are one and two people operations. I've got close to 40 employees. I have,
Michael LeBlanc
Right.
Michael Graydon
Full integrated regulatory teams for food, fully integrated regulatory teams on health. I've got people dedicated to helping create better efficiencies and supply chain events, obviously, the retail interface, and then a very strong government relations team. So, we're very different because we really come at this to create sort of facts, science-based solutions, especially on the regulatory front, and we've got the internal resources to be able to do that.
So, for me, being you know, a strong, quote, 'Government Relations' type person isn't quite as important. And, I think what our board was looking for, because to be on our board, you must be the most senior person within the organization in Canada, is somebody that had empathy and could relate to the CEOs that sat around the table. And because I've had over 20 years’ experience as a CEO in, in a number of different organizations, that seemed to be the connection that they were looking for in somebody that could bring strategic purpose and strategic alignment, and, and really help the industry's perception, and its value continue to increase in the eyes of our stakeholders, like government. And, I think sort of we've accomplished a lot of that over the last few years.
Michael LeBlanc
Tune in next episode for the rest of our conversation with Michael Graydon.
Let's talk about the opposite end of the spectrum. There's this crisis going on in the chicken processing plant. I think I checked this morning, you said there's almost 600,000 chickens that have been slaughtered. You know, of course, they were going to die anyway. But there have been, I don't know, either that. Well, here's my question, how does a plant like that not, is not able to stop the inflow of the raw material, the chicken, like why are they keep coming? And why, why is the chickens not like, 'Oh, everybody hold on to your chickens. We have some labor disputes' I, what's going on in that plant that they just have to kill all the chickens instead of just holding on to them? There's no,
Sylvain Charlebois
Well,
Michael LeBlanc
How does that work?
Sylvain Charlebois
We have supply management in Canada for a reason to. You can't really stop the production of eggs, poultry and milk overnight. If you have a cow, you can't stop it from producing milk. It will, it will continue to produce milk and that's why we set up supply management in Canada to allow farmers to rely on a market. So, it's the same in poultry.
So, there, there is a sequence of production, which is very intensive, by the way, in poultry, it's, it's about nine weeks, eight, nine weeks, from, from seeing checks to basically producing a product ready for, for harvest. So, as soon as you have one major plant shut down, and there is only two in Quebec, by the way, you're in trouble very quickly. And,
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah, really,
Sylvain Charlebois
And farmers just can't really go anywhere else, because of the quota system that we have. You can't ship them to Ontario and New Brunswick. And frankly, other places wouldn't have the space to accommodate. So, it's a very, very narrowly managed, there are no margins, essentially, which is really part of the problem. And, essentially you don't, if something goes wrong, if a fire, a strike, affecting some of these plants, and that's why I've always believed doesn't matter if you have supply management or not, the weakest link of our entire supply chain will always remain processing. If you don't have processing, and if processing is not sound, you'll get into trouble very quickly. And that's what's happening at Exceldor at Saint-Anselme. And that's why they had to, they had to gas thousands, hundreds of thousands,
Michael LeBlanc
Hundreds of 1000s,
Sylvain Charlebois
Yeah,
Michael LeBlanc
Six hundred thousands. That's a lot of, that's a lot of St. Hubert chicken that is not happening,
Sylvain Charlebois
Yes, yeah. So, food services is being affected already. We'll, we'll, so we'll reach a million by Friday, a million chickens.
Michael LeBlanc
Wow.
Sylvain Charlebois
And, and I'll tell you, Michael, I mean, this is quite disturbing. Of course, the morality and the ethics of killing chickens for no, for, for a strike is, is it bothers me quite a bit. But these people work hard. I mean, they work in a very tough environment. And they're asking for an average salary of $25 an hour. Between you and I, they deserve it. Can we pay that? No way, no way. Because we would have to charge more for chicken and I'm not sure Canadians are willing to pay more. So, that's why I think we need to have a discussion about robotics, automation. Our reliance on, on labor has become a problem in Canada, especially in processing and in agriculture.
Michael LeBlanc
Fascinating, I mean, it has echoes of what goes on in the restaurant sector, right with not the automation part, but I, you know, are consumers willing to pay more so that the people creating serving, cooking, make a better wage make and the entrepreneurs can make money? Like it's not always on the razor's edge.
Sylvain Charlebois
I know that unions don't want to talk about it. But, I think we need to talk about robotics and automation, especially for plants that are remotely located like Saint-Anselme with Exceldor, because we'll, this even if the mediator says we're going to increase their salaries by 40%, over three years, and they're going to get $25 an hour, I don't think you're fixing the problem. And, other plants, other plants will want the same too.
Michael LeBlanc
Yeah.
Sylvain Charlebois
Dairy, I'm thinking about dairy processing, and livestock, and you'll face the same problems. That's why I think we need to think about, you know, technologies.
Michael LeBlanc
Alright, last couple of issues for us. First of all, a sugar tax in Newfoundland, what's, you know, what is that? What's all that about? I think there's some states that have a sugar tax like New York, and I guess it's,
Sylvain Charlebois
Yeah,
Michael LeBlanc
That sugary beverages. Is this about Newfoundland and Labrador taking care of their people? Or is something else going on here? Or what, what's,
Sylvain Charlebois
Taking care of their debt?
Michael LeBlanc
What's the straightforward scoop? Yeah, oh, is that, you know, it's the tax part that,
Sylvain Charlebois
I mean, it's, it's, so I have to commend Newfoundland and Labrador for bringing up this issue. I think we need to talk about, about this issue. Soft drinks have been targeted for years by different countries like Mexico, European countries, you just mentioned a couple of states in the US, they've done it, with mixed results. I mean, if the focus is to actually discourage people from drinking these products, you're probably going to achieve your goals. Because, what we've seen in Mexico since 2014, the consumption of soft drinks per capita has dropped, but the obesity rate has gone up. And the rate for type two diabetes has gone up as well. Why? Because when people want a sugar fix, and they can't, and they think that the product is too expensive, they'll go somewhere else.
So, you're not really fixing the problem. You're doing two things, you're penalizing a sector and secondly, you're taking away money from consumers. The other thing that we've come up that we've, we've, we've seen in some of the research is that supply chains tend to absorb the increase, the price increase at retail. So, because these are, these are cheap to make, I mean, for a two-liter, two liter container will cost you nothing to manufacture so they can actually play around with margins and basically absorb the tax like, like, there's no, there's no tax at all. So, it really, it really depends on what you want to do. I've always believed that if you want to tax food, whatever food it is, you have to do it for the right reasons. And, I'm just not sure that Newfoundland and Labrador has actually thought about all the details related to what, what they want to do by April 1, 2022.
Michael LeBlanc
Do you think this will catch on with other provinces? I mean, other provinces, I feel like coming out of the COVID era, they're going to need some revenue, somehow, some tax revenue, whether it's consumption tax or other taxes. I mean, the governments have put out a lot of money to keep, to keep the economy going.
Sylvain Charlebois
What's interesting about Newfoundland and Labrador is that the beverage sector is not big there. So, the lobby is not very, very strong. Try to do that in Quebec and Ontario, good luck. I mean, it's, I mean, Michael Graydon certainly would be opposed to it.
Michael LeBlanc
He'd have a new issue. He'd have a new issue.
Sylvain Charlebois
Oh, yeah, absolutely. So, it would be very difficult, but I wouldn't be surprised if, you know, some, some lobbyists would actually visit St. John's and, and ask governments to reconsider because they, there is, they could, it could set a precedent. But I think that Quebec, Ontario, other provinces would be, it would be different. I think in Newfoundland, I think everyone agrees, this is really much about increasing revenues for the government, unfortunately.
Michael LeBlanc
All right, well, listen, lots of issues, great discussion, great episode. Let's leave it there. And let's
Sylvain Charlebois
Yeah,
Michael LeBlanc
Thanks again, yeah, let's thank again, the folks at omNovos, for being our presenting sponsor. And if you liked what you heard, you can follow us on Apple iTunes, Spotify, your favorite podcast platform, please rate and review Be sure to recommend to a friend or colleague in the grocery, food service, or restaurant industry. I'm Michael LeBlanc.
Sylvain Charlebois
I'm Sylvain Charlebois.
Michael LeBlanc
You think we got that better down after,
Sylvain Charlebois
I know, I know.
Michael LeBlanc
28 episodes, but there we go. Anyway, great to see you again. Thanks for joining me. Look forward to our next episode and more bonus episodes, so for now, Sylvain, take care and be safe.
Sylvain Charlebois
Take care.