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/1471305
SOURCES: NARRATIVE RESEARCH BC, AGRICULTURE CANADA, INDEED, ROVER, COYA, CANADIAN VETERINARIANS, STATISTICS CANADA, VANCOUVER SUN, INNOVATION, SCIENCE AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CANADA, GOVERNMENT OF B.C. G O F I G U R E There are 1,881 veterinarians in B.C. Applications for a vet-care subsidy program offered by the Richmond-based Regional Animal Protection Society (RAPS) went up by 50% in the first year of the pandemic British Columbians spent a total of $910 million on pet food and $662.5 million on vets and other pet care services in the first year of the pandemic 22.5% and 8.9%, respectively, from the year before Cost for 1 hour of pet reiki from Vancouver's All Paws Massage $85 5.8% of all food manufactured in British Columbia is produced for animal consumption The province is responsible for 10.7% of Canada's pet food exports Total value of B.C. chow exported in 2020: $119.6 million Price, per pound, of the Surrey-produced zero- waste bulk dog food sold by Vancouver's Good Boy Collective: $4.50 A 2019 labour study looking into the veterinary industry estimated that B.C. will fall short of demand by 100 new vets every year—resulting in a cumulative shortage of 500 vets by 2024 Raising the Bar Invermere's Wild Mountain Chocolate is betting on high- quality ingredients. Will consumers bite? by Nathan Caddell F O OD W hen Helen and Glen Davies moved from Vancouver to Invermere some seven years ago, they weren't sure exactly what the plan was. They did know they wanted to start a company of some kind. After a couple of different ventures, they happened upon a docu- mentary called Semisweet: Life in Chocolate. "We say choco- late found us, that's really what happened," says Glen Davies with a chuckle. With Helen's background in accounting for food production companies and Glen's previous work in automation—"I'm very techni- cal and so is chocolate, so we get along well"—it was a natural fit. The couple made a few batches in their garage by importing and roasting beans from Madagascar. "Everyone we gave it to was like, Holy cow, do you think you can repeat this on a larger scale?" Davies remembers. The pair incorporated under Wild Mountain Chocolate, even- tually becoming Canada's first organic bean-to-bar chocolate maker. Davies estimates there are about 15 or so bean-to-bar chocolate makers in the coun- try right now. "That's how you create the flavour within the chocolate," he argues. "The BOTTOM: TRACY CONNERY PHOTOGRAPHY JULY/AUGUST 2022 BCBUSINESS 19 complexities of cocoa are far beyond grapes. There are dif- ferent fermentation techniques; there's a world out there that's yet to be explored. That's where we're going, to do what beer has done, what coffee has done. There's a long way to go." The big question, of course, is whether the average custom- er is going to pay a premium for top-end, organic chocolate. Davies estimates that Wild Mountain pays double or triple the fair trade value for its beans, which it sources from Ecuador, Madagascar and Peru. As such, a bar of the company's choco- late is around 40 to 50 percent more expensive than other premium bars on shelves in Canada—never mind the differ- ence between it and the mass- produced stuff from the Nestlés and Hersheys of the world. "But if you look at the gro- cery shelf, pretty much every store I do a demo in, every other bar on the shelf isn't even packaged in Canada, let alone made in it," says Davies. "And I'm talking brands that you might consider to be gourmet. You just have to read the back of the package." Currently, Wild Mountain can be found in around 100 stores in B.C. and Alberta (the company also sells its product online). As Davies looks to expand across the country—he promises the push east is com- ing soon—he's confident that Wild Mountain will be able to succeed in the margins. "We knew that if we wanted to make this work, we needed to get to a certain point where our volumes outweighed our costs," Davies says. "That's where we're getting to now—vol- ume is going up, costs are going down. Not that we'll pay less for our beans, we never will." £ DARK MATTERS Helen and Glen Davies started making chocolate in their garage in 2017. They're now one of the larger import- ers of cocoa beans in the province and have their chocolate in over 100 stores