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Open wide, eh? Dot-coms deliver a taste of home By SIMON AVERY - National Post |
| MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - A new industry has sprouted to feed Canada's
brain drain to the United States. Several online startups are capitalizing on expatriate sentimentality by shipping orders of uniquely Canadian foods to the United States, which, despite its reputation as consumer heaven, can't fully satisfy Canadian tastes. "There's a different palate on the Canadian side of the border," says Christopher Boring, chief executive of AlwaysCanadian.com, which ships everything from Red Rose Tea to Byrd's Custard powder (an essential ingredient for homemade Nanaimo bars). With offices in San Diego county and Kitchener, Ont., the firm is filling 20 to 30 orders a day. "It's very rare we see an order without a Coffee Crisp or box of Shreddies in it," said Mr. Boring, who launched his Web site three months ago. The number of uniquely Canadian grocery items is larger than most natives would imagine and has even surprised the entrepreneurs seeking to profit from the trade. "The sheer scope is amazing -- things like Robin Hood flour. I would have assumed flour was flour, but apparently not," said Robert Peters, chief operating officer of AlwaysCanadian. The effort to feed Canada's exodus with the right mix has even been picked up by corporate America. Cisco Systems Inc. recently placed a US$600 order with AlwaysCanadian to entertain a gathering of Canucks at its headquarters. Art Howarth, a former Montrealer and senior manager of Cisco's technology centre in San Jose, Calif., laid out a spread of Aero chocolate bars, Tim Horton's coffee and Lay's flavoured potato chips last week at the Digital Moose Lounge, a monthly gathering of Canadians in Silicon Valley. "When I lived in Canada, I thought 'How different can the culture really be?' Today, there are certain foods, certain tastes that, yeah, I miss," Mr. Howarth said. Unfortunately, customs restrictions prevent him from ordering his favourite northern foods -- Montreal smoked meat and unpasturized cheese -- for himself and more than one thousand fellow Canadians at Cisco headquarters. The entrepreneurs behind these new businesses say they got the idea from first-hand experience. Hilary White runs CanadianFavourites.com from Dundas, Ont., along with her brother Ian, who has lived in Coral Springs, Fla., for the last 15 years. "I was always sending care packages down there," she said. In the first week of operation, Ms. White says word of her business is spreading quickly, even among Americans. One U.S. customer had picked up a craving for E.D. Smith ketchup while vacationing in Canada but could not persuade the manufacturer to take personal orders. The emphasis of the business model is to appeal to re-located Canadians' "sensory snapshots" of the past, which may include a certain smell or taste from childhood, Mr. Boring said. Many Canadians living in the United States are willing to buy into that notion. "It's a sentimental thing," admits Mr. Howarth. "Once Canadians in the U.S. taste the fruit of their labour and what it pays them, they rarely come back. But we do retain our identity no matter where we go." WHAT CANADIANS MISS WHEN IN THE UNITED STATES: alwayscanadian.com 1. Coffee Crisp 2. Smarties 3. Shreddies 4. Areobars 5. Tim Hortons coffee canadianfavorites.com 1. Smarties 2. Lay's dill pickle and ketchup chips 3. Tim Hortons and President's Choice coffee 4. Big Turk 5. E. D. Smith jams Source: Financial Post |
