This Commerce Life

What if you could invest in promising Canadian startups for as little as $5,000 — and help a food or CPG brand scale to retail shelves at the same time?

 

In this episode of This Commerce Life, Phil and Kenny sit down with Jesse Wiebe, co-founder and key figure at Startup TNT — a Saskatoon-based angel investing syndicate that's democratizing early-stage investment across Canada.

 

Jesse shares his unconventional path: from growing up on a Saskatchewan farm to working in Gordon Ramsay's kitchen, bartending through an economics degree at York University, and eventually returning home after COVID wiped out his job, his apartment (fire above his unit), and his relationship — all at once. Out of that reset came a mission to activate Canadian capital and build a real startup ecosystem outside of Toronto.

 

In this episode:

✅ What Startup TNT is and how their stage-gate investment model works

✅ Why Canada is losing its best founders to the U.S. — and what to do about it

✅ How CPG industry veterans can put their retail skills to work as angel investors

✅ The difference between VC, angel investing, and family offices (explained simply)

✅ How early-stage food and beverage brands can apply for funding

✅ Why "playing Moneyball" is the right strategy for Canadian startups

✅ Portfolio companies to watch: Vegain, Seven Summit Snacks, Toothpod, Scription, and more

 

If you work in Canadian CPG, retail buying, or food and beverage — this episode is your introduction to a funding model that could change how brands you love get built.

 

🎙️ Guest: Jesse Wiebe | Startup TNT | Saskatoon, SK

🎙️ Hosts: Phil Chang & Kenny Vannucci | This Commerce Life

 

📩 Interested in investing or applying for funding?

Connect with Jesse on LinkedIn or visit startuptnt.com

 

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🎧 Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you listen.

 

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What do the Canadian Shield, a fourth-generation family business, and a trade show floor in Germany have in common? Wild rice — and one of the most remarkable food origin stories you've never heard.

In this episode of This Commerce Life, Phil Chang and Kenny Vannucci sit down with Matt Ratuski, fourth-generation owner of Floating Leaf Fine Foods, whose family has been harvesting Canadian wild rice since 1935. From his great-grandfather trading fish with First Nations communities in Keewatin, Ontario, to building one of Canada's first wild rice processing facilities, Matt's story is equal parts frontier history and modern food entrepreneurship.

We dig into how Canadian wild rice is still harvested the old-fashioned way — in remote rivers, streams, and bogs across northern Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Ontario — and why that makes it fundamentally different from the cultivated rice grown in the U.S. We also cover the deep, multi-generational relationships with First Nations harvesters, the wild crop's two-to-three-week harvest window, and why Europe discovered this superfood long before Canadians did.

Plus: why innovation in food always requires education, what it takes to build a Canadian food brand with global reach, and why Phil is about to start cooking wild rice on camera.

 

check out Floating Leaf here: https://eatwildrice.ca/

What do you do when the soda you started making to complement your craft brewery ends up outgrowing the brewery itself? That's exactly what happened to Diana, co-founder of Callister Soda. 

In this episode, Diana walks us through her unlikely journey — from office worker dreaming of a sustainable farm, to opening Callister Brewing in Vancouver in 2015, to hand-capping bottles and hand-seaming cans as her natural soda line quietly took on a life of its own. She shares the hard lessons of navigating supply chain chaos, a craft beer market in decline, and a rent increase that tripled over a decade — and how a perfectly timed facility opportunity in Port Coquitlam gave Callister Soda the home it needed to grow. If you're a food or beverage founder wondering whether to follow the momentum or stay the course, Diana's story is one you'll want to hear.

 

Check out Callister here: https://callistersoda.com/

From Istanbul to Grocery Aisles: Arda and the Hummzies Story
In this episode, Kenny and Phil sit down with Arda, the founder of Hummzies — a hummus-based, chickpea snack that's quickly gaining traction across Canadian retail shelves. Arda shares his remarkable journey from growing up in Istanbul, where a bombing near his high school prompted his family to send him to Canada at just 16 years old, to studying political science at the University of Toronto, and eventually finding his passion in the food industry. 
He talks about how his mentor Eyub at Red Crown Pomegranate Juice gave him the foundation to learn the business, how honest advice from distributor Ratan at Jiva led him to his current partnership with Star Marketing, and why doing your own demos and treating your distributor like a true partner — not just a service provider — is the key to building a brand the right way. Whether you're a new CPG founder trying to figure out distribution or just love a great immigrant entrepreneur story, this one's packed with real talk and practical lessons.
 
check out Hummzies at https://www.hummzies.com/
Thank you to LGDF Wholesale for sponsoring this episode: https://www.lgdfwholesale.com/

Natasha Chawla spent 25+ years in the corporate world working on brands like Coca-Cola and Unilever before launching Greens&Beans — a line of vegetable-packed, allergen-free pasta sauces born from her own kitchen.
What started as a mom's mission to feed her allergy-prone, hockey-playing son healthy meals turned into a full-fledged CPG brand now landing on shelves across British Columbia and beyond.
In this episode, Natasha shares the real journey: the R&D nightmare of scaling from 10 litres to 300 (when her sauce turned into dessert), the pivot from glass bottles to shelf-stable pouches for e-commerce, and the hard lesson that getting into a store is only half the battle — you still have to sell it.
Kenny and Phil also dig into the practical side of growing a food brand the right way: why training your distributor matters, how to pace your retail pipeline so you don't outgrow your co-packer, and the power of collaboration with complementary brands.
Whether you're just starting out or scaling up, this conversation is packed with real talk about what it actually takes to get a sauce from your kitchen to the shelf.
🔗 Check out Greens & Beans: https://greensandbeans.ca/ 📍 
Thank you to LGDF wholesale for sponsoring this episode: https://www.lgdfwholesale.com/