This Commerce Life

Every Ayoub's store has a roaster, and stores with one do better. Amir Hosh, owner of Ayoub's Dried Fruits & Nuts, explains how fresh roasting, farm-direct sourcing, and trained "store energy" turned his family's Iranian nut-shop tradition into a growing Canadian retail chain.

Amir's father Ayoub started working in a nut shop in Iran at 14. He went on to open his own shop and trained a generation of family members who now run nut stores across the Middle East, where these shops are as common as coffee shops. Amir took over the Canadian business in 2014 with a Howard Schultz–style bet: if he Westernized the concept and delivered on quality and service, North Americans would stop buying nuts off the grocery shelf. Today Ayoub's has eight locations, with Victoria and its first U.S. store in Seattle on the way.

Kenny walked into two Ayoub's stores as a regular customer and was surprised by the service, so we brought Amir on. He explains how he tries to systemize something most retailers leave to chance: a store's "magnetic presence." He covers why paying more doesn't keep good people but a real career path does, why every assistant manager is expected to train their own replacement, and what Starbucks and Lululemon teach about keeping energy consistent as you scale.

We also get into the supply chain. Ayoub's imports directly, buying organic almonds from a family farm in Spain and cashews from a farmer in Vietnam, and roasts in-store. That replaces a grocery supply chain that can run six to seven months from farm to pantry. Amir also explains why fresh means no preservatives, which is why his team makes its own jam for its cookies.

Check out Ayoub's here: https://ayoubs.ca/
 

Every client gets their own chef and a fully custom menu, and Fresh in Your Fridge does it for 80 households a week. Founder Erika Weissenborn explains how she built a premium personal chef meal prep service in Vancouver, and why her growth comes from search, not ads.

Erika started with a nutritional science degree from UBC and her own struggle to eat well on a restrictive diet. That became cooking for a few households in 2014, then an in-home chef service, and after COVID, a delivery model built on 100% organic produce, zero-waste glass containers, and a dedicated chef who designs each client's menu around their dietary needs.

Phil and Kenny dig into how Erika owns search terms like low FODMAP and food sensitivity meals in Vancouver, why roughly a third of inbound leads become clients, and how a nutritionist-led intake process keeps the kitchen balanced. They also get into the operation: six chefs working autonomously in a 3,200 sq ft kitchen split into mini kitchens, an in-house "grocery store" run by operations, and a four-day cooking week plus an admin day that keeps chefs around for years.

The conversation wraps on what's next: replicating the model in two or three more markets, and whether long-hours professions like law and investment banking could be the next growth pocket.

Find Erika here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erika-weissenborn-3606a975/

Check out Fresh in your Fridge here: https://freshinyourfridge.com/

She landed in Grammy swag bags and airport shops, then walked away from her distributor after one surprise visit. Ginny Bailey of Friggin Lip Balm on stepping away for nearly a decade and coming back stronger.

Ginny started Friggin Lip Balm out of her shop in Uxbridge, Ontario, where customers kept asking her to make a lip balm, the one product she was sure the world didn't need. A spot in the 2011 Grammy swag bags and a Toronto Star feature turned it into a local sensation, and a distribution deal put it in Vancouver and Toronto airports. Then a gut feeling sent her across the country to visit her distributor, and what she found ended the partnership on the spot.

After stepping back to deal with major life events, Ginny relaunched from her new home in Sechelt on BC's Sunshine Coast. She tested the market again with just two flavours, turned seasonal limited runs into permanent SKUs, and doubled her sales through Shopify and local markets. Phil and Ginny get into how a Community Futures business program changed the way she saw her brand (hello, "frigging affirmations" on every cap) and her numbers, why she's confident enough to charge what a premium product is worth, and why she's staying firmly in her lane as a lip care expert.

It's also a reminder to pay attention to the Canadian-owned brands still standing: Friggin is handmade and hand-labelled in BC, at least until the labelling machine finally arrives.

Shop Friggin Lip Balm: http://frigginlipbalm.com/

When Amy Rogerson took over Van Rice Products in 2019, her first week running the company was also her first week of chemotherapy. Then COVID hit.

Amy is the General Manager of Plum Good, Canada's only locally-made organic rice cake — and one of the last rice cakes still manufactured in this country. She joins Phil Chang and Kenny Vannucci to talk about buying a small, well-loved West Coast brand (started by two Japanese-Canadian brothers back in 1985) and rebuilding it from the ground up into a national one.

We get into the reality nobody warns you about when you buy a CPG business: machinery on its last legs, a full facility move, reinvesting roughly what you paid just to keep the lines running, and the five-to-seven-year grind of actually making it work. Amy also shares how recent tariffs forced a supply-chain rethink that turned into an unexpected win — a new, higher-protein lentil cake — and what the "Buy Canadian" moment has meant for local manufacturers.

It's candid, funny, and genuinely inspiring — a conversation about resilience, problem-solving, and why the health food industry pulls for each other.

Find Plum Good at plummgood.com.

With the Canada–U.S. trade war pushing brands to rethink where their product goes, Mexico has quietly become one of the biggest openings in Canadian CPG. Former Bed Bath & Beyond Mexico CEO Steve Sotto joins Phil and Kenny to break down how Canadian brands actually get in — and where most of them get stuck.

Fresh off touring Mexico City retail together in June, the crew digs into the channel Canadians keep overlooking: thriving department stores like Liverpool and El Palacio de Hierro, in a market where Canada's own department stores (The Bay, Sears, Eatons) have all but vanished. If you've got a premium product and you're only thinking Walmart and Chedraui, you're missing a huge slice of Mexican consumerism.

Then it gets practical. Steve walks through the two halves of exporting — the commercial side (getting on shelf) and the logistics side (getting into the country legally) — and why the second one is where brands blow it. Cofepris registration, NOM numbers, product classification, custom brokers, bonded warehouses: miss a step and your shipment sits at port racking up penalties, no matter how perfect your labels are.

The throughline: Mexico is a sign-off market, not a complaints-based one like Canada. Someone authorized has to clear your product before it moves. Get the process right and, as Steve puts it, whatever's hot in Canada tends to be hot in Mexico within three months.

Find Steve and his logistics group at www.prelex.mx. 

Exploring an export move? Reach Phil and Kenny at [email protected].

In this episode:

• Why Mexico's department stores (Liverpool, El Palacio de Hierro) are the channel Canadian brands keep missing
• Commercial vs. logistics: why landing product in-country is the easy part
• Cofepris, NOM numbers, and the classification wall that strands shipments at port
• Why Mexico requires a sign-off, and Canada only reacts to complaints
• Reading the Mexican consumer — and the trade-war window that's open right now

Kids won't drink water — but they'll chase the bright, fun stuff. Laura Chiodola built Electric Kids to hijack that impulse for good.

After 20 years building Tealish, Laura saw the same problem every parent knows: sports drinks and TikTok-hyped brands own the kids' beverage space, while the "healthy" options are either boring water or clinical rehydration products. Electric Kids is her answer — a clean-label kids' electrolyte stick pack with coconut water powder as the first ingredient, natural colour from spirulina and beetroot, and a salt level formulated for kids' bodies, not adults'.

In this episode, Laura, Phil, and Kenny get into why packaging that appeals to kids (not moms) is the real unlock, how a product can be a "vehicle" to get more water into a kid's day, and why the brand that wins a loyal audience in one category doesn't automatically win the next one. It's a sharp look at category creation, clean-label positioning, and building for both the buyer (parents) and the user (kids) at once.

Find Electric Kids at getelectrik.com and on shelf at Healthy Planet.

Find Laura here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-chodola-6324bb16/

Retail veteran Peter Chapman has spent 20 years teaching brands what buyers actually want to hear — and it's rarely another pitch about how great your product is.

After 19 years at Loblaw running fresh merchandising across Atlantic Canada, Peter went out on his own in 2008 to help suppliers build real relationships with retailers. On this episode he sits down with Phil and Kenny to unpack what separates the brands that get on shelf from the ones that get shown the door.

The conversation digs into why "walking the store" is a non-negotiable part of the job, how store staff are the industry's most underused source of intel, and why understanding a retailer's economics beats fighting them. Peter also shares why frozen and refrigerated have quietly become the categories to watch, and how a wave of Canadian-first sentiment is reshaping what brands should be leading with — at home and in export markets.

Find Peter at SKUfood.com, where he's published a weekly industry newsletter for 347 straight Fridays, and connect with him on LinkedIn.

In this episode:

Elbows up — but make it strategic. Phil and Kenny break down what the latest US tariff escalation actually means for Canadian food, beverage, and CPG brands.

This one's raw and unscripted. The guys air out the frustration, then get clinical: how founders should be stress-testing their US ambitions, why "buy Canadian" is more than a slogan right now, and how to hunt for opportunity instead of just moaning about the mess.

They dig into the case for looking beyond the border — Mexico, Europe, Asia, and the I-5 corridor as its own set of regional markets — and why parking your US plan doesn't mean blowing it up. Plus a rundown of the food & beverage associations and buy-local programs across BC, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, and Atlantic Canada that brands can tap for peanuts.

If you're a Canadian brand, tell the world you're Canadian — people are asking, and not just here at home.

In this episode:

This Commerce Life is Canada's longest-running commerce podcast, hosted by Phil Chang and Kenny Vannucci.

Meet Colin Christensen, the entrepreneur who turned "mushrooms and chocolate" into a fast-growing Canadian functional food brand — and made it taste like chocolate, not sand.

MyCAO (a mashup of mycelia + cacao) started almost by accident. Hired as CEO of a psilocybin company waiting on regulation, Colin needed a revenue stream and stumbled into the functional mushroom space. A conversation with a high-end Edmonton chocolatier flipped his original "Canadian MUD/WTR" idea on its head — and four months later, MyCAO was making revenue.

In this episode, Colin walks Phil and Kenny through the real formulation challenge behind the brand: getting a full, effective gram of a single mushroom species into every button without the gritty, sandy texture that plagues most mushroom products. The team leaned on renowned herbalist Robert Rogers, sourced full-spectrum mushrooms from a GMP-grade Canadian grower, and paired everything with Valrhona dark chocolate. The result is a functional dose you'd actually want to eat.

It's a sharp look at building a differentiated CPG brand in a crowded wellness category — where dose, quality, and format are the whole game.

Find Colin Christensen (CEO) on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinchristensen/

Getting on a show floor was never the hard part — being ready to do business once you're there is. In this episode, Phil and Kenny sit down with Aaron Skelton, President & CEO of the Canadian Health Food Association, to unpack how the CHFA show is evolving from an exposure play into a readiness engine for Canada's next wave of natural, health, and CPG brands.

Aaron walks through Greenhouse — CHFA's new curated program that gives emerging brands seed and scale stages, a dedicated show-floor section, and a retailer breakfast that puts founders in front of buyers before the doors open. It's built around a simple truth Phil and Kenny hear constantly from brokers and distributors: "Are they ready?" That one question decides everything.

The conversation gets into why brands should sometimes say no to a listing, how 1,000 doors can sink a company that isn't prepared for the cost of growth, the financial-literacy gap founders don't see coming, and why the merchandising space on the floor is a free education most brands walk right past. Plus a look at red-tape reduction for the natural health sector and what it really means on the ground.

If you're building a food, beverage, or CPG brand in Canada — or you're a buyer hunting for the next thing before everyone else finds it — this one's for you.

In this episode:

Connect with Aaron Skelton and the team at CHFA and see what's coming on the show floor this September.

Find Aaron here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronskelton/

Make sure you register for CHFA Now: https://www.chfanow.ca/toronto/