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Raising a Little Hell in Canada
by Roger Tottman
The Canadian Government in the Great White North is famous for the amount of information it collects from its citizens. It therefore came as a surprise to find that when it comes to Fiery Foods and hot sauces, if a product contains tomatoes, they file it under "Ketchup," and if not, they file it under "Soy." So even though the statistics may not show it, Fiery Foods are alive and well in Canada and growing from coast to coast at an amazing pace.
This sudden growth in the consumption of hot foods seems to have a number of roots. Some stem from immigration patterns. Others from the fact that Canadians are traveling abroad more and then bringing back the flavors they have experienced to introduce them to friends. And surprisingly, the Canadian recession of the 1990s, while disastrous for many businesses, proved to be a catalyst for the growth of the Fiery Foods Industry throughout this country.
Growing Ethnic Diversity
Many of the immigrants who came to Canada in the 1960s and early 1970s already had a taste for hot food. Canadian industry recruited skilled tradesmen from Britain during this period, and many of those who came were from the industrial north where Indian restaurants were already a part of the social fabric, and beer and curry have an affinity. These people were surprised and distressed to find that there were virtually no Indian restaurants in Canada, nor could you buy the ingredients to make your own curry.
This situation began to change in the early 1970s after Idi Amin took power in Uganda and began to drive out the country's middle class who were largely East Indian. Many of these people came to Canada and began to open small stores and restaurants which started in the major cities and soon spread to the smaller centers.
The 1970s also saw the first waves of immigration from the British West Indian islands, particularly from Jamaica, as well as from Southeast Asia, a pattern that has continued to the present day. This is also when the Canadian government started to accept refugees from Vietnam, and the first people from Hong Kong began to look to Canada as a hedge from what might happen when the British Colony was returned to China in 1997. As this happened, changes began to appear in Chinese restaurants when Sichuan dishes were suddenly highlighted on the menus.
These events marked the beginning of a demographic shift that continues to this day. According to a recent study done by Richard A. Loreto Consulting Limited, minority peoples in Canada made up just under 10 percent of the population in 1991, but that number is expected to double by 2016, with the largest number of people being Chinese, South Asian, West Asian, and Arab. In fact, Asians now account for 55 percent of the immigrants to Canada.
As a casual observer of the scene, two incidents stick in my mind. I spent the summer of 1990 in Victoria,British Columbia, and one day while driving downtown, I saw a new restaurant called the Mongolian Fire Pot. Never having had Mongolian food, I decided to try it the next day. The main dish consisted of a small cauldron with a live fire underneath. Lamb was then cooked in a sauce similar to an oil fondue and served with dipping sauces. On my return to Ontario in the fall, I discovered a local corner store had been changed into an Oriental food market whose shelves had at least thirty varieties of hot sauces.
Also during the 1970s, as well as the 1980s, Canadians began to travel abroad much more frequently, both for business and for pleasure. Many traveled to the Caribbean and Mexico and returned with a taste for hot food that they then wanted to find in restaurants and replicate at home. Although luxuries such as travel were enjoyed less frequently during the Canadian recession of the early 1990s, this activity will pick up momentum in the coming years, as the Conference Board of Canada reports that spending on tourism will jump from $12 million in 1997, to $25 million in 2010 because Baby Boomers will inherit as much as CA$1 trillion over the next twenty years, a portion of which will be spent on vacation and travel.
From High Tech to Hot Foods
By the spring of 1991, Canada was slipping into the worst recession since the 1930s which created a great loss of confidence, especially in the retail sector. Statistics Canada, a government agency, says that between 1990 and 1995 the incomes of individuals dropped by 6 percent, which essentially eradicated average income gains made during the second half of the 1980s. They say that after taking inflation into account, the average individual income in 1995 was almost equal to that of 1985, and slightly lower than in 1980.
The people who were "downsized" at this time had never been affected much by previous recessions. Many of the people in middle management as well as those with high technical skills lost their jobs at this time. But a resulting paradox of this recession is that many of the afore-mentioned professional people who changed careers because of job loss, actually helped to create growth in the Fiery Foods Industry.
From High Tech to Hot Foods
David Jobe, who had been a chilehead for years, worked in cable television in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Suddenly laid off, he made a trip to Delaware, where he bought some cases of hot sauces from the Peppers distributorship, and began selling them from the trunk of his car. This led to a mail-order business and the founding of Jobe's House of Pepper Ltd. Starting with seventeen products in his 1997 mail-order catalog, Jobe now has a store in a downtown mall and carries more than 300 products. He predicts a growth of between 15 percent and 25 percent a year over the next five years.
Rob Myers and his wife Alison of Chilly Chiles are another example. Meyers' background is in semiconductor metrology, software/instrument development and applications development, while his wife, who is now a network technician, had some retail experience. Little did they know that their love of spicy foods would turn into a career. Rob, who used to travel extensively throughout the Southwestern U.S., would bring back fiery products unique to that area, but found them hard to replace once they had run out. "When I changed careers and stopped traveling, we tried mail-ordering the products from the United States, but it proved to be very expensive and unreliable," says Meyers. "We decided that we could do a better job of it!" They started a home-based mail-order company in 1993, and expanded in 1995 to include a small retail outlet in Navan. In 1998 they opened a larger store in the Byward market area of Ottawa.
Another hot shop that sprang up during this time is Chili-Eh's Gourmet in Sarnia, Ontario. Its owner, Brian Toner, had worked at a major chemical plant in Sarnia's Chemical Valley for twelve years. But on August 31, 1993, the chemical plant down-sized, forcing over one hundred workers, including Toner, to strike out and seek new incomes. When he read a market survey indicating that there was a wide acceptance of Fiery Foods among a surprisingly broad age group, Toner took the opportunity to turn his long love affair with hot foods into a new career. Since opening in June, 1996, he has sold salsas, sauces, oils, vinegars, snacks, and a wide variety of condiments at a trade center.
Because of increased public interest, Brian figures that more and more farmers in Ontario will also benefit by breaking into the specialty pepper market. "We have excellent growing conditions in southern Ontario," he says. "Many tobacco farmers are looking for alternate crops and the exotic peppers fit in nicely."
Canadian Heat Going Global
Steve Carter of The Blackhorse Trading Company began at the other end of the scale. He, with his father George, began making sauces and other condiments in the fall of 1996, but found it hard to break into the market. They did, however, develop one customer who was to be the key to their future. In the tourist town of Niagra-on-the-Lake, is the Angel Inn, one of the oldest inns in Canada, that attracts over 150,000 visitors a year. The owner Peter Ling loved their products and when a store he owned next to the Inn became vacant, he suggested that they open a retail store there. They took his advice and opened their shop in May 1998, and now business in booming. Carter says he is already seeing repeat business from New York state, and he is considering opening a mail-order distribution center in the United Kingdom.
Another hot sauce business enjoying worldwide attention is Sure Fire Imports Ltd., owned by Fred Swift, whose interest in all things fiery has been cultivated over the past twelve years while working in various restaurants and learning to prepare cuisines such as Cajun, African, Caribbean, and Italian, as well as Buffalo-style chicken wings. Each one of these types of cooking contributed in some way to the formulation of Prairie Fire hot sauce, which Swift has been marketing since December, 1993, and now sells in forty-three states in the U.S., as well as in South Africa, England, Sweden, and Australia. There is even interest in Russia, France, Greece, Italy, and Japan. Additionally, he does twenty private labels in the U.S., and ten in Canada, with more to follow.
Currently, Swift is working at Chianti Cafe and Restaurant in Calgary, Alberta, as well as running Sure Fire Imports Ltd. He credits his success so far to several factors, including his ongoing experience in the food industry, help he has received from Agriculture Canada, and the contacts that he made through the National Fiery Foods Show® in New Mexico.
As the president of Lost Continent Hot Sauce Traders located on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Dianne Dallas has also been working hard to ensure that Canada's new-found status in the Fiery Foods Industry remains strong.
Originally Dallas, whose background is in marketing, and her brother-in-law planned to open a hot food take-out store in downtown Victoria. Before they got started, however, he was offered a good job in California and pursued that instead. In 1996, Dallas founded Lost Continent on her own, and now says that business is wonderful with sales for the first six months of 1998 doubling the figures for all of 1997. She sees this growth continuing for the next five or six years. Part of this growth is due to the fact that recently Dallas has been able to place her products in a major food chain in British Columbia and Alberta, and she expects to be exporting to distributors overseas in the near future. Dallas is also involved with a Canadian hot sauce guidebook containing some simple recipes that will be published in late 1998.
It should be additionally noted that the growth of the hot foods industry in Canada is not confined to home consumption. Recently Prime Restaurants of Mississauga, Ontario began to open a chain of new restaurants called the Red Devil Barbecue and Tavern. One of the special features of this restaurants is a "Wall of Flame," said to be Canada's largest selection of international brand hot sauces. Their latest restaurant is in Calgary, Alberta, and is reported to be doing very well.
Heated Drinks
In the midst of all this spicy food, the beverage industry is making its own contributions. The small Glatt Brother's Brewery of London, Ontario began brewing John Glatt's Green Chili Beer in 1996. This beer, which is brewed with green habaneros and green cayenne peppers, is very popular in Toronto, and is now also available in Michigan.
Meanwhile, in Grimsby, Ontario, winemaker and distiller John Hall was dreaming up a new product that he hoped would be hot, spicy, totally Canadian, and have appeal to those who drink "Bloody Caesars." The drink, which is made with vodka, clamato juice, and a few drops of hot sauce, was invented in Calgary twenty-five years ago, and today Canadians drink 300 million of them annually.
Hall's contribution to this heated drinking scene is now an increasingly popular product called Inferno Vodka. The vodka extracts not only the heat from the pepper, but all the natural flavor from the flesh as well, which adds a new taste dimension. Originally, Hall assumed that his main market would be in Canada, but after attending a food and beverage show in the U.S., he returned home with orders from twenty-five states and a need to triple is production immediately. Inferno Vodka will be available in liquor stores in the U.S. this fall.
So it seems that the Canadian hot foods industry that was sparked by the ramifications of a troubled economy, is now growing as the result of recovering finances. Not only are people learning about spicy cuisines as they acquire more disposable income to travel more frequently, but increasingly health-conscious upper-income Baby Boomers are looking for extraordinary ways to add variety to their diets. An interest in this kind of specialty shopping is indicated by a survey conducted by the Canadian Council of Grocery Distributors which found that more than 70 percent of the respondents in their 40s shopped at places other than their primary grocery stores. The survey also stated that people with higher incomes are more likely to shop around. Additionally, the Canadian Grocer cites an estimate by McKinsey and Company which says that approximately $12 billion new dollars will be spent in food purchases in 1998, with 20 percent of that going to restaurants, and the remainder going to grocery stores. This means that more people are at home creating their own spicy concoctions.
And so it looks as though the sales of Fiery Foods in this relatively new Canadian marketplace have nowhere to go but up. With unemployment at an eight-year low, Canada is a far different place today than it was in 1995, according to Alister Smith, deputy chief economist for Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, in an article for CNews. "It's finally behind us," he says.
Canada Cooks
64 percent of Canadians cook from scratch and 55 percent still bake from scratch. Americans on the other hand, prefer already-prepared meals from grocery stores and restaurants. Likely reasons are that Canadian restaurants are more expensive than those in the U.S., and more Canadians seem to enjoy preparing food for themselves.
Source: Kraft Canada Inc.
Contacts
Blackhorse Trading Co.
Niagra on the Lake, Ontario
Contact: Steve Carter
(905) 468-5255Chili-Eh's Gourmet
Sarnia, Ontario
Contact: Brian TonerChilly Chiles
Ottawa, Ontario
|Contact: Rob Myers
(613) 241-6668Dan'T Inferno Foods Ltd.
Mississauga, Ontario
Contact: Dan Taylor
(905) 858-8623Green Chilli Beer
London, Ontario
Contact: John Glatt
(519) 668-6204Inferno Pepper Pot Vodka
Grimsby, Ontario
Contact: John Hall
(905) 945-9225Jobes House of Pepper
Halifax, Nova Scotia
Contact: David Jobe
(902) 492-4688 (HOTT)
Lost Continent Hot Sauce Traders
Vancouver Island, British Columbia
Contact: Dianne Dallas
(888) 544-0527Red Devil Restaurants (Prime Restaurants)
Mississauga, Ontario
Jill Jones
(800) 361-3111Sure Fire Imports Ltd.
Calgary, Alberta
Contact: Fred Swift
(403) 270-0583; (888) 336-FIRE
Roger Tottman is a Canadian writer who lives and works in St. Catharines, Ontario. In 1997 he published the Traveller's Guide to Great Beer, a book on the growth of micro&endash;breweries in Ontario. He has also written widely about the history and lore of the Great Lakes. His main interests are food, drink, history, and Formula 1 auto racing.