This Commerce Life

His daughter asked, “Daddy, can we sell that waffle mix to help other families like ours?” A year later, Worry Free Food is in 70+ stores across Atlantic Canada, has an Ontario launch, a foodservice distributor, and its own allergen-free production facility.
Anthony Winston is a licensed electrical engineer who sold his engineering firm, retired from engineering, and moved his family from Southern California to Nova Scotia. Both of his daughters have severe, anaphylactic food allergies. The waffle and pancake mix he built at home became Worry Free Food: top allergen-free, halal, and kosher mixes that need only oil and water.
Kenny and Phil talk with Anthony about building a brand that started in brown paper bags at farmers’ markets. They cover how he used QR-code surveys with neighbours to refine taste and texture before launch, and why he bought his co-packer, Valley Flax Flour in Middleton, NS, to become a dedicated free-from facility. They also get into how a free trade-show table turned into a Flanagan Foodservice listing, and why he thinks foodservice beats retail for an allergen-free brand: convince one chef or dietitian, and you reach thousands of people.
The conversation also covers the “you only have one SKU” pushback from buyers, the case for allergen-free ambient mixes as a way to free up crowded freezer space, a Costco roadshow that reached a huge audience in the allergy community, and Anthony’s bigger mission of getting safe food to food banks and beyond.
🔗 Find Worry Free Food: https://worryfreefood.co/

She started selling jewelry on Facebook Marketplace at 13. At 16, she’s running a national brand with billboards, a cross-Canada show circuit, and a full-time high school schedule.
Chanelle Chalazan, founder of Chic & Charm Boutique in Saskatoon, joins Phil Chang and Kenny Vannucci on This Commerce Life to talk about building a direct-to-consumer jewelry brand from scratch. She spotted a gap in the market between cheap, low-quality jewelry and expensive premium pieces. Her answer was waterproof, nickel-free, 925 sterling silver jewelry sold at an accessible price, made possible by skipping retail stores and keeping overhead lean.
We get into why she turned down boutiques that wanted to mark up her product, how she found a Canadian supplier and brought in chemists to test waterproofing, and what 20+ consumer shows a year have taught her about regional buying habits. Calgary wants hoops. Ottawa wants charm bracelets. Toronto is a tough room.
She also shares a smart lesson about measuring trade show ROI: her Calgary Stampede sales came in short of her goal on the floor, but the Christmas online orders from Calgary made up the difference. Plus, why she went after billboards when ad reps said they “don’t deal with kids,” and why radio didn’t deliver the same results.
Check out Chic & Charm here: https://chicncharmedjewelry.com/

Most non-alcoholic wine tastes like pop with a wine label. A CEO and a food scientist from Vancouver set out to fix that, and built Glimmer, a premium dealcoholized sparkling wine now in top restaurants across Canada.
Phil Chang and Kenny Vannucci sit down with Jane Stoller (CEO) and Janet Helou (Chief Sales Officer & Wine Scientist) of Glimmer to unpack why non-alc wine has been so hard to get right. Janet explains why wine falls apart when the alcohol comes out, why heat-based distillation “cooks” it, and how reverse osmosis plus bubbles rebuilds the body and mouthfeel that still wines lose.
Then it’s all about go-to-market. Glimmer fits in wine aisles, restaurants, and grocery, which gives them freedom but makes channel strategy messy. They share how starting with fine-dining sommeliers turned wine directors into brand ambassadors (including a surprise 20-case liquor store order traced back to one pour at Blue Water Cafe), why they launched single-serve cans to eliminate by-the-glass waste, and how they’re expanding coast to coast through Sober Market and into the US.
We also talk about the shifting culture around drinking, why non-alc options raise restaurant guest checks, corporate gifting as an untapped channel, and why a good dealcoholized still red remains the holy grail.
In this episode:
Why non-alcoholic wine has struggled, and the science of dealcoholization
Dealcoholized wine vs. sparkling juice vs. wine alternatives
Using on-premise and sommeliers as a trial and credibility engine
Single-serve cans: cutting waste for restaurants and lowering the trial barrier
Scaling across Canada and into the US while keeping a tight SKU lineup
Find Glimmer:
🌐 drinkglimmerwine.com (stockist list at drinkglimmerwine.com/stockists)
📸 @drinkglimmerwine

Basin Food & Buyer Expo is coming to Kimberley, BC, and the theme is The Business of Food: Fermenting New Ideas. Shaina joins Phil and Kenny to share what founders, farmers, and buyers can expect at the region's food industry event.
The travelling expo moves around the Columbia Basin each year, and this year it lands in the East Kootenays. Shauna explains why the Thursday expo floor runs alongside Kimberley's regular farmers market, why farmers belong in the room as much as processors, and why you don't need a booth to get value from the show. As we put it: pay to walk, listen, and learn.
New this year is the Experts Café, a private room where attendees can book 20-minute one-on-one sessions with Phil and Kenny, Lara and Christine of Munching On Molecules, and Mandi Lunan and Jessica Piccinin. Shaina also gives us an early look at Bread and Salt Sessions, the new podcast she's launching with Mandy and Jessica that focuses on founders, farmers, and women producers.
Day two is "grab a notebook and grind" territory, with Brent Preston on regenerative farming, a funding panel on grants and loans with actual funders in the room, James Donaldson of BC Food & Beverage on the Vancouver Food Terminal, and TCL's session on growing your brand once it's on the shelf.
In this episode:
→ Why Basin Food & Buyer Expo is moving to Kimberley
→ The new Experts Café and how one-on-one sessions work
→ Bread and Salt Sessions: a new food podcast launching at the show
→ Grants, loans, and how producers can tap into funding
→ Why attending without exhibiting is still worth it
→ The founders' dinner in a 300-year-old German barn (and how to join the waitlist)
Learn more and see the full agenda at basinfood.ca. To join the dinner waitlist, email info@basinfood.ca.

A Prairie farm kid turned agronomist built a mushroom-based protein that started as a Canadian Space Agency challenge entry and is now in Amy's Kitchen. Gavin Schneider of Maia Farms joins This Commerce Life to talk about stretching meat without anyone missing it.
Gavin grew up on his family's farm in Southern Alberta. He did agricultural research in Laos and scaled greenhouse robotics globally before entering the Deep Space Food Challenge in 2021. His first idea was "Space Bacon." What came out of it was Maia Farms, a Vancouver biotech that grows oyster mushroom mycelium into ingredients for food manufacturers. On the label it just says oyster mushroom.
Phil and Kenny, a self-described alt-protein skeptic who won't budge on his bolognese, dig into why Maia isn't anti-meat but anti-inefficiency. They talk about blended "balanced protein," like a 60/40 mushroom-beef bolognese that surprised one of Canada's big animal protein companies. They also cover why the ingredient swells when cooked instead of shrinking like ground meat, and where it's turning up beyond meat: ice cream, baking, pet food, and food bank pantries.
Gavin also shares how Maia beat Cargill and DSM for a global meat-solution award, early export shipments to Mexico and Japan, and what it takes to build a truly global Canadian food company.

Check them out at https://maiafarms.com/