This Commerce Life

Every client gets their own chef and a fully custom menu, and Fresh in Your Fridge does it for 80 households a week. Founder Erika Weissenborn explains how she built a premium personal chef meal prep service in Vancouver, and why her growth comes from search, not ads.
Erika started with a nutritional science degree from UBC and her own struggle to eat well on a restrictive diet. That became cooking for a few households in 2014, then an in-home chef service, and after COVID, a delivery model built on 100% organic produce, zero-waste glass containers, and a dedicated chef who designs each client's menu around their dietary needs.
Phil and Kenny dig into how Erika owns search terms like low FODMAP and food sensitivity meals in Vancouver, why roughly a third of inbound leads become clients, and how a nutritionist-led intake process keeps the kitchen balanced. They also get into the operation: six chefs working autonomously in a 3,200 sq ft kitchen split into mini kitchens, an in-house "grocery store" run by operations, and a four-day cooking week plus an admin day that keeps chefs around for years.
The conversation wraps on what's next: replicating the model in two or three more markets, and whether long-hours professions like law and investment banking could be the next growth pocket.
Find Erika here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erika-weissenborn-3606a975/
Check out Fresh in your Fridge here: https://freshinyourfridge.com/

She landed in Grammy swag bags and airport shops, then walked away from her distributor after one surprise visit. Ginny Bailey of Friggin Lip Balm on stepping away for nearly a decade and coming back stronger.
Ginny started Friggin Lip Balm out of her shop in Uxbridge, Ontario, where customers kept asking her to make a lip balm, the one product she was sure the world didn't need. A spot in the 2011 Grammy swag bags and a Toronto Star feature turned it into a local sensation, and a distribution deal put it in Vancouver and Toronto airports. Then a gut feeling sent her across the country to visit her distributor, and what she found ended the partnership on the spot.
After stepping back to deal with major life events, Ginny relaunched from her new home in Sechelt on BC's Sunshine Coast. She tested the market again with just two flavours, turned seasonal limited runs into permanent SKUs, and doubled her sales through Shopify and local markets. Phil and Ginny get into how a Community Futures business program changed the way she saw her brand (hello, "frigging affirmations" on every cap) and her numbers, why she's confident enough to charge what a premium product is worth, and why she's staying firmly in her lane as a lip care expert.
It's also a reminder to pay attention to the Canadian-owned brands still standing: Friggin is handmade and hand-labelled in BC, at least until the labelling machine finally arrives.
Shop Friggin Lip Balm: http://frigginlipbalm.com/

When Amy Rogerson took over Van Rice Products in 2019, her first week running the company was also her first week of chemotherapy. Then COVID hit.
Amy is the General Manager of Plum Good, Canada's only locally-made organic rice cake — and one of the last rice cakes still manufactured in this country. She joins Phil Chang and Kenny Vannucci to talk about buying a small, well-loved West Coast brand (started by two Japanese-Canadian brothers back in 1985) and rebuilding it from the ground up into a national one.
We get into the reality nobody warns you about when you buy a CPG business: machinery on its last legs, a full facility move, reinvesting roughly what you paid just to keep the lines running, and the five-to-seven-year grind of actually making it work. Amy also shares how recent tariffs forced a supply-chain rethink that turned into an unexpected win — a new, higher-protein lentil cake — and what the "Buy Canadian" moment has meant for local manufacturers.
It's candid, funny, and genuinely inspiring — a conversation about resilience, problem-solving, and why the health food industry pulls for each other.
Find Plum Good at plummgood.com.

With the Canada–U.S. trade war pushing brands to rethink where their product goes, Mexico has quietly become one of the biggest openings in Canadian CPG. Former Bed Bath & Beyond Mexico CEO Steve Sotto joins Phil and Kenny to break down how Canadian brands actually get in — and where most of them get stuck.
Fresh off touring Mexico City retail together in June, the crew digs into the channel Canadians keep overlooking: thriving department stores like Liverpool and El Palacio de Hierro, in a market where Canada's own department stores (The Bay, Sears, Eatons) have all but vanished. If you've got a premium product and you're only thinking Walmart and Chedraui, you're missing a huge slice of Mexican consumerism.
Then it gets practical. Steve walks through the two halves of exporting — the commercial side (getting on shelf) and the logistics side (getting into the country legally) — and why the second one is where brands blow it. Cofepris registration, NOM numbers, product classification, custom brokers, bonded warehouses: miss a step and your shipment sits at port racking up penalties, no matter how perfect your labels are.
The throughline: Mexico is a sign-off market, not a complaints-based one like Canada. Someone authorized has to clear your product before it moves. Get the process right and, as Steve puts it, whatever's hot in Canada tends to be hot in Mexico within three months.
Find Steve and his logistics group at www.prelex.mx.
Exploring an export move? Reach Phil and Kenny at podcast@thiscommercelife.com.
In this episode:
Why Mexico's department stores (Liverpool, El Palacio de Hierro) are the channel Canadian brands keep missing
Commercial vs. logistics: why landing product in-country is the easy part
Cofepris, NOM numbers, and the classification wall that strands shipments at port
Why Mexico requires a sign-off, and Canada only reacts to complaints
Reading the Mexican consumer — and the trade-war window that's open right now

Kids won't drink water — but they'll chase the bright, fun stuff. Laura Chiodola built Electric Kids to hijack that impulse for good.
After 20 years building Tealish, Laura saw the same problem every parent knows: sports drinks and TikTok-hyped brands own the kids' beverage space, while the "healthy" options are either boring water or clinical rehydration products. Electric Kids is her answer — a clean-label kids' electrolyte stick pack with coconut water powder as the first ingredient, natural colour from spirulina and beetroot, and a salt level formulated for kids' bodies, not adults'.
In this episode, Laura, Phil, and Kenny get into why packaging that appeals to kids (not moms) is the real unlock, how a product can be a "vehicle" to get more water into a kid's day, and why the brand that wins a loyal audience in one category doesn't automatically win the next one. It's a sharp look at category creation, clean-label positioning, and building for both the buyer (parents) and the user (kids) at once.
Find Electric Kids at getelectrik.com and on shelf at Healthy Planet.

Find Laura here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-chodola-6324bb16/