Welcome to our Summer SIAL Special bonus episodes of The Food Professor podcast, brought to you by our friends at Caddle! In this episode, meet Guy Chartier, CEO of Bee Maid Honey Limited, a leading food cooperative based in Alberta & Manitoba with 300 Western Canadian Beekeepers who care for the honeybees and harvest their pure, delicious honey.
Welcome to our Summer SIAL Special bonus episodes of The Food Professor podcast, brought to you by our friends at Caddle! In this episode, meet Guy Chartier, CEO of Bee Maid Honey Limited, a leading food cooperative based in Alberta & Manitoba with 300 Western Canadian Beekeepers who care for the honeybees and harvest their pure, delicious honey.
As the official podcast for the SIAL Food Innovation show this year in Montreal, Sylvain and I had the opportunity to interview the leading thought leaders, brands, and makers in the food industry. As the saying goes, these are their stories.
Stay tuned for season five of The Food Professor #podcast, debuting August 27th. We'll be back on the mic together live with our particular brand of truth, insight, interviews, custom research from our friends at Caddle, and a little bit of fun!
Sylvain Charlebois 00:04
Welcome to our summer SIAL special bonus episodes of The Food Professor podcast, presented by Caddle.
Michael LeBlanc 00:13
As the official podcast for the SIAL Food Innovation show this year in Montreal, Sylvain and I had the opportunity to interview the leading thought leaders, brands and makers in the food industry. As the saying goes, these are their stories.
Sylvain Charlebois 00:26
Stay tuned for season 5 of The Food Professor podcast debuting August 29. We'll be back on the mic together live with our particular brand of truth, insight, interviews, custom research from our friends at Caddle and yes, a little bit of fun.
On this episode meet Guy Chartier, CEO of Bee Maid Honey Limited, a leading Food Cooperative based in Alberta and Manitoba with 300 Western Canadian beekeepers who take care of the honeybees and harvest their pure delicious honey. Well welcome back we have a special guest, in fact Michael I don't think I don't recall talking about honey at all in the last four or five years.
Michael LeBlanc 01:13
No, which is funny because I love honey.
Sylvain Charlebois 01:16
Guy, welcome to our podcast.
Guy Chartier 01:18
Great. It's good to be here.
Sylvain Charlebois 01:19
Yeah, absolutely and so you've been here for a few days now and so you've been meeting a lot of people so tell us more about the structure, who's involved, et cetera.
Guy Chartier 01:30
Yeah, so Bee Maid Honey is a company that's owned by 2 honey cooperatives, so, the Manitoba Honey Co-Op and the Alberta Honey Co-Op and between the two coops we have about 300 beekeeper members in the prairie provinces.
Sylvain Charlebois 01:40
So, your company is a coop or you're owned by cooperatives.
Guy Chartier 01:43
Yeah, we're owned by two coops, so we'll consider ourselves a coop obviously because we you know, we're owned by two cooperatives. It's just-, Bee Maid Honey, as a company, is owned by two co-ops, but all owned by honey producers in Western Canada. So, all Canadian honey, obviously. So, and the reason beekeepers are situated in those three provinces, for the most part is because 80% of the honey produced in Canada is produced in the prairie provinces, you know, what they call the honey belt. Basically, from the southeast of Manitoba all the way to-, all the way up to the northwest part of Alberta basically.
Sylvain Charlebois 02:13
How do you get the bees to endorse a belt?
Guy Chartier 02:15
Well, you gotta remember there's because there's so much canola grown, you know, in Canada, right, the prairies. So, and a lot of that has to do with pollination.
Michael LeBlanc 02:24
And bees are kind of imported to pollinate, right. It's a big part of the bio system, right?
Guy Chartier 02:29
Absolutely because bees, honeybees are not native to Canada, right. So, for the most part if you didn't have beekeepers to take care of them, you wouldn't have honeybees.
Michael LeBlanc 02:37
Right. Right. Right. Right.
Guy Chartier 02:37
So, it's important to have the beekeepers behind them.
Sylvain Charlebois 02:39
And canola-, canola fields are a feast for bees.
Guy Chartier 02:44
And not only that, but they produce a very nice honey, a very light-colored honey. It's a very good quality product, very tasty product. So, a very consistent product. So yeah, so that's why it works so well to be situated where we are. So we have a plant in-, in, - in Winnipeg and packing facility and we also have one in Spruce Grove, Alberta.
Sylvain Charlebois 03:03
Now, I understand. You're the largest honey packer in Canada, correct?
Guy Chartier 03:08
Yeah, I think so. I think we're pretty darn close.
Sylvain Charlebois 03:11
That's what I was told.
Guy Chartier 03:12
Oh, we're, yeah, we're pretty darn close. We definitely-, we-, see on tonnage wise we sell more honey than anybody else on the grocery store shelf in Canada. So, there's no doubt about that. So-
Sylvain Charlebois 03:20
So what brands are you supporting?
Guy Chartier 03:22
Well we do a lot of the store brands in Canada and we also do the DBA brand, obviously it's very well known to Western Canada, especially in Western Canada, it's been-, most people have grown up with the brand and the cream honey and so on and they're so and, yeah, so we do very well at retail, food service as well you know we're we are supplying the two largest food service distributors in Canada and obviously sold-
Sylvain Charlebois 03:44
Gourmet Foods and Cisco.
Guy Chartier 03:45
Yeah.
Sylvain Charlebois 03:46
Wow. Okay.
Guy Chartier 03:46
So, most restaurants, probably, if you know the chef’s using honey, has a very good chance they're using our products, so. Yeah, so that's worked well, obviously, for us so and I think you know, for the most part it has a lot to do with just the quality of the product, you know, they know they can rely on the-, you have a reliable product to work with. There's a lot of talk about honey coming from other countries that might be adulterated.
Michael LeBlanc 04:08
Yeah let's-, let's talk about that. So in-, Sylvain and I were talking Off mic about honey when we were talking about you and in my mind honey ranks up there is one of the top food fraud products right and I know when I buy my honey I want to know where it's coming from because it's adulterated with like corn syrup or whatever but how do you fight against that because obviously they come in and you know, they're opening price point products is that's why they do it and how do you-, how do you sit-, obviously your quality situates yourself different but how do you how do you think about that?
Guy Chartier 04:38
Well, I think for the most part number one is that our industry in Canada is well regulated, you know to stay away from that, if you will. So, so that the honey, you know, you're pretty well guaranteed that if you look for a product in Canada your product and it's going to be a hundred percent honey.
Michael LeBlanc 04:53
Have you ever seen anyone put honey in packaging that looks like yours that is sold somewhere like fraudulence, real fraud?
Guy Chartier 05:01
Well, okay, well, there's I mean, you can legally, you know, mix honey with corn syrup if you want to, but you have to declare it. Legally. So-, so there are products out there called honey spread. Like not honey. So, if it says honey spread, probably because it's blended with something else.
Michael LeBlanc 05:17
Right.
Guy Chartier 05:18
So-, so you can do that.
Sylvain Charlebois 05:19
But were they mentioned in the listed ingredients.
Guy Chartier 05:20
But it shouldn't be, it should be mentioned in the listed ingredients. The issue we have is a lot of countries, especially China, for example, where they ship honey that has been blended with other liquid sugars, but they don't declare it, right and now it's about price, when it's passed as honey 100%, but it's not?
Michael LeBlanc 05:38
Who-, is the CFIA, who would catch that or is-, should the grocers be-, should the grocers be doing more on-site inspections?
Guy Chartier 05:45
And I'd say for the most part, it's CFIA. And I think they're doing a fairly good job of that.
Sylvain Charlebois 05:49
They test. The-, a sample of tests and a couple of years ago, focusing on honey specifically, and I think the faulty-, the percentage of faulty samples wasn't all that high, I think it was, it was south of 10%.
Guy Chartier 06:07
And I would say probably the reason is the importers that do bring it in are careful, right? They do their own testing, they know that CFIA is keeping an eye on it. So, they-, they're not going to take the chance.
Sylvain Charlebois 06:18
All of that noise around fraud is not impacting your brand and your ability to do business.
Guy Chartier 06:23
It's impacting, I'd say, the industry overall in the world. Absolutely, but us specifically here in Canada, I'd say, probably not as much as other countries.
Sylvain Charlebois 06:31
So, you're at SIAL here and so we spoke before we went on air, and your intent here is to actually get more business overseas.
Guy Chartier 06:40
Yeah, we went through more business investment. Absolutely.
Sylvain Charlebois 06:42
So what are people-, what are buyers telling you potential buyers telling you about your brands, your company as a whole? You're from Canada, I suppose you're hearing a lot about trustworthiness and all that stuff.
Guy Chartier 06:56
Yeah. I mean, absolutely. Right. So-, so our quality control is very-, we have very high standards when it comes to that. So we're part of the Safe Quality Foods, SQF program. So that goes a long way with customers. So they expect that we're part of True Source, which is an organization remotely testing honey, for fraudulent products and so on. So, you know, we have that standard in place. So-
Sylvain Charlebois 07:17
So True Source, how does that work, True Source?
Guy Chartier 07:19
Basically, True Source is an organization that if you're part of, they have-, they will do audits. Right. So, they will have third party audits done into your-, your establishment to make sure all the honey meets the specification it's supposed to.
Sylvain Charlebois 07:32
These audits are they preannounced or are they just-
Guy Chartier 07:34
No, a lot of them, they will just be unannounced, they come in and they'll do their things. So, and then, you know, there's-, there's different-, if you're a country where you're at higher risk than obviously their more focused on that, but a country like Canada, Argentina, for example, it's less risky, because there's less fraudulent honey. So, the you know, so the so I'd say that, you know, we still get audited, there's still an audit, but it's not as you know, as provisioned, if you will. So.
Michael LeBlanc 08:02
Well, let's-, let's talk about more fun stuff. So, what does innovation look like in the honey category? When I think of innovation, I think of I've seen there's a hot honey trend, for example and when you think of a product, that is-, creamed honey, so what does innovation look like and what are you guys working on?
Michael LeBlanc 08:17
Sure, sure, sure.
Guy Chartier 08:17
Well, for us, I think a lot of it is around packaging, you know, innovation around that. So, we, you know, we've come out with a product called Li'l Honeys, which is a portion pack, you know, it's a little bit of a different format that you typically see for soy sauce or ketchup, it's more of a elongated product and it looks quite neat and it's used for a lot for coffee stations. You know, it's a different segment of the market that we're going after, you know, so there's a convenience. So, a lot of coffee shops would have honey and a bottle that got sticky, you know,
Guy Chartier 08:19
And just not-, didn't work very well. Well, Li'l Honeys, it's a great product that you just take, put in your coffee and coffee go and it works well. So that's been very successful for us and we're having a lot of, actually a lot of success or a lot of attention on that product in Asia as well.
Michael LeBlanc 09:03
Oh, good. So far format innovation is kind of foremost in your mind.
Guy Chartier 09:06
Yes, format and we also manufacture our own plastic bottles and so we do that ourselves in our plant in Alberta. So, you know and there's a bit of-
Michael LeBlanc 09:13
Wow, why do you do that? So, you're vertically-, reversed integrated, is it just you couldn't find a reliable source? Or-
Guy Chartier 09:20
It's a matter of-, there's-, there's a couple things around that, right. It's more environmentally friendly, obviously, because you don't have all these trucks and bottles on the road, because we just do it on our own plant.
Michael LeBlanc 09:29
You extrude them, you-, you buy the pallets, extrude and make new plastic bottles.
Guy Chartier 09:32
Yeah, yeah, we do that as well. So, it's all in there. So then, yeah, so there's, you know, some environmental footprint, so that's very important but obviously there's a cost you know, it's cost savings we can pass on to our customers as well there.
Michael LeBlanc 09:43
Sure, gets you more competitive.
Michael LeBlanc 09:44
Um, go ahead.
Sylvain Charlebois 09:44
Is the-, is the overall honey market growing and if so, why?
Guy Chartier 09:44
You don't-, we don't have to worry about that profit margin on the bottle itself, right, because we manage that ourselves, so that works quite well.
Michael LeBlanc 09:51
That was gonna be my question.
Guy Chartier 09:54
Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, you're seeing, for the most part, the category is probably growing three to 5% a year, you know, which is substantial year after year. So, it does very well. I mean, there's you know, there's a few years where you've seen a little bit of a decrease, but for the most part it grows.
Michael LeBlanc 10:09
What's driving that kind of growth is different uses or, or people are looking for more natural solutions, or both?
Sylvain Charlebois 10:15
Younger generations are adopting the product.
Guy Chartier 10:18
Absolutely, both, yeah, absolutely. You know, it's got that halo effect, you know, about the natural-, that it's natural, it's a natural sweetener. So that goes a long way. There's-
Sylvain Charlebois 10:25
It's pretty rare you find at a grocery store with listed ingredients with only one ingredient, really, it's pretty rare.
Michael LeBlanc 10:32
Yeah, yeah.
Sylvain Charlebois 10:33
So, I'll talk about clean labels.
Michael LeBlanc 10:35
I was gonna say it's a nice ingredient deck, right.
Guy Chartier 10:37
All it says is honey, that's it. That's all we do, maybe like I said, we just-, we just basically warm it up, you know, and we clean it, and we put it in a bottle and that's all we do with it. So, but I mean, and our pride, obviously, is also and I think it goes along with the fact that we're producer owned. Right. So that goes-, that the message that goes along with people that don't like the idea that they're buying something that they're supporting local producers,
Sylvain Charlebois 10:57
You did tell me that you're-, you're increasing the number of producers you do business with and so why are they coming to you, why are they-, because in most fields, we're seeing fewer farmers, you're experiencing the opposite, why?
Guy Chartier 11:14
Well, I think the attractiveness to join our organization is just first of all, many beekeepers prefer to be beekeepers, as opposed to trying to market their product and sell on the open market and stuff and, and there's such volatility in the market, especially these days, that you know, it's a stressful thing to be able to do right to sell your honey, have you sold the right price or price goes up, the price down. With us, obviously, the price goes up and the price goes down as well, but it's a lot more reliable as far as what you're going to get, when you're going to get paid and so on. Take all your honey, you know, we'll market it for you, you don't worry about that. You don't have to vote, you know what price you're gonna sell it at and then basically all the distribution of the revenue goes right back to all the beekeepers, we call it essentially non for profit. Right. It goes right back to them.
Michael LeBlanc 11:58
And I guess-, I guess the bees' role in pollination and agriculture. It's interesting, right when you think I know a little bit about bees because I-, for one of my clients, we-, they're Slovenian who love honeybees, the Slovenian, I didn't know the Slovenian culture is big about honeybees. So, we actually found a Quebec, Montreal based company to come in and start three or four honey hives for us and so on site. We have honeybees, and then at the end of the year, they harvest it and we give it to the members and they love it. I mean it, you know, little jar of honey and it just so-, so it really, really, really resonates with me.
Michael LeBlanc 12:30
And we read every now and then about, you know, fungus or disease or giant-
Guy Chartier 12:30
And the other part of our business is we also supply the wares for the beekeepers. So, we have three stores. Yeah, so we have three stores and that's a substantial part of our business as well. Now, not just our members, but nonmembers as well can buy from us, but the neat thing about this is we see beekeepers every day, right, because our stores are located where our offices are, where plants are. It's so easy to talk to these guys in a daily basis and know what's going on in the industry, right and, you know, how the, the bees are doing and like, you know, right now we're hearing that, you know, for the most part, the moisture is pretty good in the west and the bees made it through winter fairly well, you know, but there are years where guys are pretty depressed, they come into our place, you know, in spring and go, oh my God, all my bees died, right, and you have to start all over again.
Guy Chartier 13:13
Mites is a big issue. Right. So that's a huge threat to bees.
Michael LeBlanc 13:16
Giant super bees that kill other bees. I mean, it's quite-, it's quite the-, it's, it's quite the thing and so you just-, you said your store, do you do more than wholesale, do you sell direct as well, or you just singular?
Guy Chartier 13:28
No, for the most part, I mean, as far as, honey, yeah, no, we sell through wholesale.
Michael LeBlanc 13:32
Okay. That's your primary.
Guy Chartier 13:33
I mean, there's a bit of honey sold through because we have three stores where beekeepers buy, you know, right, so a consumer can go and buy.
Michael LeBlanc 13:39
So a little bit of like-
Guy Chartier 13:39
But we don't do a lot of that, it's mostly sold through dealers.
Michael LeBlanc 13:43
Well, listen, this has been interesting. I guess one last question for you. I saw this movie on the weekend The Beekeeper with Jason Statham, and I got to thinking that's gonna drive some demand because it makes him look really cool and hip being a beekeeper, so what do-, I think you guys should get behind that.
Guy Chartier 13:57
That the toughest beekeeper I've ever seen, I'll tell you that much.
Michael LeBlanc 14:00
He does. He does. It's a funny-
Guy Chartier 14:02
I mean, how many bullets that he dodged in that movie.
Michael LeBlanc 14:04
Oh, come on. It's-, it's so many if you haven't seen it, it's a mix of John Wick meets, like the plot is exactly the same. So instead of killing.
Guy Chartier 14:12
It's a Hollywood movie.
Michael LeBlanc 14:14
No, no, it's an Amazon movie. So instead of killing John wicks puppy, these bad guys shotgun the beehives and that gets him mad. Oh, that gets a man, it gets us all mad. I saw that and you get angry because you like bees, I like bees.
Guy Chartier 14:29
I've been in the business long enough that you don't want to frustrate a beekeeper, believe me.
Michael LeBlanc 14:36
Well, listen, thanks so much for joining us here at SIAL, it's been a pile of fun. Great company. Love your product and thanks for-
Guy Chartier 14:42
Thanks for having me.
Michael LeBlanc 14:43
For sharing some of your journey and good luck continued success and thanks again for joining us here at The Food Professor podcast at SIAL.
Guy Chartier 14:50
Happy to be here.
Sylvain Charlebois 14:51
Thank you, Guy. Thanks for tuning into our summer SIAL bonus interview series. Michael and I will be back live on the microphone together in late August. I'm The Food Professor, Sylvain Charlebois.
Michael LeBlanc 15:06
And I'm Michael LeBlanc, media entrepreneur, consumer growth consultant and keynote speaker. Safe travels everyone. See you back in August.
Sylvain Charlebois 15:15
Take care.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
honey, beekeepers, product, bees, Canada, food, honeybees, Alberta, part, business, producers, brand, absolutely, stores, sell, innovation, situated, Canola, CFI, pretty