Exploring resources available to PEI’s food entrepreneurs Passion. A passion for food. Passionate about food. A recurring motif when speaking about PEI food entrepreneurs is ‘passion’. Billed as “Canada’s Food Island”, PEI’s branding is bold. Unlike the Prairies being called Canada’s Breadbasket, or Ontario with its Corn Belt or the wine and fruit regions of the Niagara Valley, PEI has…
October 1, 2019
Second generation lobster fisher finds new market with his lobster dip Rob Morrison can’t imagine not lobster fishing. In fact, he’s fished every spring season since he left high school, with the exception of one year after he graduated from university. He was working with an accounting firm, “I just about went stir-crazy, it’s the only season I didn’t fish.”…
March 1, 2019
Rob Morrison and his company Covehead Seafoods come out on top with their premium PEI lobster dip Rob Morrison, a lobster fisher and recent food entrepreneur, walked away with a $25,000 award from Innovation PEI’s Ignition Fund after his business, Covehead Seafoods, was declared the winner of the second Food Xcel program. Offered by Food Island Partnership (FIP), the Food…
November 1, 2018
Handcrafted donuts prove to be popular product for food entrepreneurs “Do or donut; there is no try.” Or something like that. When Via Reyes moved to PEI from the Philippines in 2013, she noticed that local dessert options were limited. With the help of her partner, Justin Wilson, she set out to change the Island’s dessert culture for the better.…
December 1, 2017
PEI Sea Salt Company launches From the waters of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence on the north shore of P.E.I. comes a sea-salty new business that two Island entrepreneurs dove right into. “The PEI Sea Salt Company – it automatically identifies us as local, and we’re all about local,” said co-founder, Darren Blanchard. Blanchard originally got into the sea salt…
December 1, 2017
Garlic. It’s a fundamental vegetable used for centuries as a condiment, flavouring or for traditional medicine purposes. One Islander using garlic for years is Ryan Abdallah, the owner of Cedar’s Eatery in Charlottetown. And it’s become his passion to spread his love of garlic across Canada. “It just kinda became this obsession, more than a project, you know, same as…
November 30, 2017
The legalities behind starting a food business After all the fun of idea development and logo invention it was time for some serious business: getting the paperwork in place to legally sell our marzipan. Luckily Mike has a background in finance and, as an experienced entrepreneur, a lot of expertise with respect to legal business requirements. For us, it all…
December 1, 2017
It’s the season of gift giving – what better time to support those that make our lives tasty all year round? Salty’s put together a handy list of gift ideas for everyone on your list that loves the good things in life. Some of our suggestions were inspired by those we’ve featured in past issues of Salty, while others are…
November 1, 2017
Em Zember is living her dream of operating a goat dairy “I started with two in 2000,” says Em Zember, as we watch eight attention-seeking goats waiting to be milked. We’re standing in an airy barn situated on the property best known by Islanders as the headquarters of the Great Canadian Soap Company. Zember is hopeful that in time it’ll…
November 1, 2017
“It was just by chance,” Mike Beamish says of how he discovered he could use the ground apples from his u-pick orchard if he fermented and distilled the juice. Having stumbled upon an article that outlined how he could transform what had once been destined for the compost into a saleable product, Beamish set out to establish a distillery. Four…