This Commerce Life

Most small business owners think they have a brand. What they actually have is a collection of decisions made in a hurry — four shades of blue, six different fonts, and a website built room by room without a blueprint. Sound familiar?

In this episode, Phil and Kenny sit down with Kevin Sotto of Sotto Digital — the digital strategist behind the This Commerce Life rebrand — to talk about what branding actually is, why so many Canadian food and CPG brands get it wrong, and what it takes to build a digital presence that earns trust.

Kevin shares his journey from engineering at McMaster, to RBC, to health-tech startup life, to running his own digital marketing and branding consultancy. He also pulls back the curtain on his experience working with TCL — from cleaning up a messy website to uncovering the three core pillars of the brand and why that "editorial navy" is doing more work than anyone realized.

What does it take to turn a house-made restaurant dressing into a multi-SKU CPG brand with distributors, Power Bowl mixes, and a brand-new line of high-protein soup mixes? This week, Phil and Kenny sit down  with Joanna and Stephanie, the co-founders of Umami Crave the Fifth, a Kelowna-based food brand making waves across BC and beyond.

Joanna and Stephanie pull back the curtain on the full journey: starting with a beet quinoa salad dressing at BNA Brewing, surviving a pandemic launch, building their own production facility, and navigating the brutal reality that getting into a store is easy — getting off the shelf is hard. 

They share hard-won lessons on SKU naming disasters (50,000 pouches ordered before rebranding), sourcing Canadian pea protein, competing in a crowded condiment category, and why their vegan Worcestershire sauce accidentally became their fastest-growing product.

 

Check out Umami Crave the Fifth here: https://www.umamicravethefifth.com/

Find out more about the Big Cheese Festival in Armstrong here: https://www.aschamber.com/thebigcheese.html

Find out more about Basin Food Summit here: https://basinfood.ca/

 

If you want to sign up for one of our classes, email us at [email protected]

What does it take to leave a 30-year career at one of the world's biggest consulting firms — and bet it all on a 65-year-old condiment brand that had been sitting dormant for a year?

Marc Whitmore is the CEO and owner of Dennis Horseradish, Canada's only horseradish producer. A former Senior Partner and global leader at Deloitte, Marc walked away from corporate life in his 50s to become a food entrepreneur — and ended up finding his business for sale on MLS.ca like a cottage listing.

In this episode, Marc shares the full journey: the failed hops venture that came first, why he bought a brand with no active customers, how Dennis went from zero to 1,000+ stores across four countries, and what growing 25% looks like when you're still reinvesting every dollar back into the business.

We also dig into the realities of Canadian food entrepreneurship — why you need to "get in the flow" to find deals, how to think about exporting before you've even figured out your own backyard, and why Marc says the best reason to build a business is for Canada itself.

 

Check out Dennis Horseradish here: https://dennishorseradish.com/

If you're a brand and you need help to scale, or you know a brand that needs help - send them to us! www.thiscommercelife.com

After 37 years running the same grocery store, Peter Boyd is stepping away from the floor — but he's nowhere near done. In this episode of This Commerce Life, Phil and Kenny sit down with one of the most beloved independent grocery operators in the Okanagan to talk about what it actually takes to build a loyal customer base, why kindness isn't the enemy of profit, and what comes next for Peter as he turns his energy toward food banks, local vendors, and community infrastructure.

This one hits different. If you've ever wondered what separates the retailers that champion small brands from the ones that don't — this is the conversation.

What does it look like to bootstrap a CPG brand from your kitchen, survive an acquisition, and then pivot into a category that barely existed? Melissa L'Heureux-Hache, co-founder of Vegain — a Vancouver-based plant-based sports nutrition company — shares the full story with Phil and Kenny on This Commerce Life.

From launching a vegan hemp skincare brand in Toronto (with zero ability to advertise on any major digital platform), to doing 40+ trade shows in a single year, to getting acquired by a public company in 2019, to co-creating Surge — North America's first clear vegan protein in a can — Melissa's entrepreneurial journey is one of the most honest and energizing stories we've told on this podcast.

And if that wasn't enough? She also opened a café and retail storefront on Vancouver's Seawall. Because why not.

In this episode, we get into:

How Melissa and her partner Eden bootstrapped and sold their first CPG company with no science background

The challenge of advertising a hemp-based product when the internet thought you were selling drugs

What it actually feels like to go through an acquisition and work for the acquiring company for a year

The origin story of Vegain and why they launched with one of the most niche SKUs possible — a vegan mass gainer

The accidental innovation behind Surge — and why they pitched it at CHFA Launchpad before the product even existed

Why they opened a café (and what it taught them about food service, staff culture, and community)

The retail expansion push and what's next for Vegain

Connect with Vegain: 🌐 vegain.ca 📍 Find them on the Vancouver Seawall

Connect with This Commerce Life: 🌐 thiscommercelife.com 📱 Follow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube