Made with Local concentrating on Canadian, strikes Costco deal

On balance, it’s a good week for Sheena Russell, founder and CEO of Made with Local, the “sustainable snack foods company” that does its manufacturing in Windsor.

On one hand, Russell made the decision to pull the plug on the component of her online business that served American customers.

“We have a very small amount of business in the U.S., most of it direct to consumer, an individual person wants to buy a few cases of our bars, and they buy them from our online shop and we ship it directly to their house,” said Russell, adding that depending on the month, 10 to 15 per cent of the company’s online business had been going to the U.S.

“We have very few retailers in the U.S. There’s a handful of little independent stores that have discovered us and have ordered our product, juice bars and health food shops, things like that, probably a dozen total.”

But looming tariffs and proposed new trade regulations would create so much red tape and cause so much extra time to be spent that it won’t be worthwhile to do the American business.

However, Russell is overseeing the manufacture of 60 pallets of packages of her protein cookie, which will be sold in Costco stores from Ontario east, beginning in April.

Made with Local started work on recipes for the cookie early last year, then launched in September in Sobeys store across the country.

“It’s the first major innovation we’ve done into the functional nutritional space. We’ve been really well known for our soft baked bars since the farmers market days, back in 2012, and nutrition fads come and go and we’ve let them come and go, we don’t really participate in any of that stuff,” Russell said.

“We’re much more focused on sustainability, real food ingredients and a bigger perspective on food. The trend of growing protein interest by consumers is something that is huge right now in our industry, and one of the things that I felt we could create something really special to fulfill that customer need and still align with our ingredient ethos.”

Made with Local products are sold by 3,000 retailers across Canada, including Sobeys and Loblaws, but the Costco deal has considerably more volume potential.

“When you think about it, the average Sobeys or Loblaws customer is going to buy a bar or two of ours. At Costco, they’re in boxes of 14. It’s astronomically bigger,” said Russell. “They ordered 60 pallets, which would typically mean we’re starting in 30 clubs; they usually start with two pallets per club.”

The company has 14 employees split between sales and marketing in Dartmouth and production in Windsor, where the 8,000-square-foot plant can turn out 10,000 units per day and is just ramping up automated wrapping machinery.