With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1173482
R U N N E R - U P Taylor Gemmel P R E S I D E N T , A N I T A ' S O R G A N I C G R A I N & F L O U R M I L L n Until two years ago, Taylor Gemmel never owned a business or thought of himself as an entrepreneur. Today, he's the owner and president of Anita's Organic Grain & Flour Mill and a first-time EOY finalist. Gemmel, raised in Calgary, joined Anita's in 2010 as general manager and grew so passionate about the company that he bought it in 2017. Now he's exploring the potential for moving into Europe as well as consolidating three locations in Chilliwack into one larger facil- ity to reduce inefficiencies, gain space and position the business for expansion. The new location will have a bakery "where we can work with our whole grains and put them on display and let people taste the difference," says Gemmel, who holds a busi- ness administration degree from Michigan State University. Providing wholesome ingre- dients for good, nourishing food is Anita's raison d'être. Gemmel describes families breaking bread together, bread baked with Anita's products. It's an image that inspires him and his 25 employees: "Being an organic raw food supplier, anyone who is buying our product is going to be making something with that product," he says. "They're going to be using their hands. They're probably going to be feeding it to their families or people they care about, whether it's at home or business. What's more important than that?" –J.N.W. n Since 1997, Sustainable Produce Urban Delivery (SPUD) has been refining its proprietary technologies to curtail food waste. The result? The Burnaby- based online grocer, known for fresh, organic food delivery, reduced its waste to 0.5 percent, versus around 6 percent for most grocers across Canada. When CEO Peter van Stolk, founder of Jones Soda Co., joined SPUD in 2010, the direc- tion of its growth shifted: "The conversation wasn't about how do we get a new customer," the Edmonton native says; the ques- tion became "How can we teach these really massive retailers to reduce their food waste?" Last year SPUD launched subsidiary Food-X, which licenses technologies to retailers. Food-X configures a client's warehouse, then customizes SPUD's inven- tory management system for the space. "The real challenge is maintaining the inventory accuracy at a super high level," says van Stolk, who leads a team of 700. "If you get that right, you eliminate food waste." –J.N.W. VP content, launched a tree-planting business in 2007 that sold carbon off- sets. Besides spending four summers planting some 150,000 trees in Saskatch- ewan, they developed relationships with people around the world who believed in reforestation as a way to reduce the impact of climate change. Though the youths' business model failed, they applied the lessons learned. So far, Ten Tree has planted more than 30 million trees. The goal is to plant one billion by 2030. —J.N.W. BCBUSINESS.CA R U N N E R - U P Peter van Stolk C E O , S P U D . C A Peter van Stolk OCTOBER 2019 BCBUSINESS 43