This Commerce Life

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/

Every Ayoub's store has a roaster, and stores with one do better. Amir Hosh, owner of Ayoub's Dried Fruits & Nuts, explains how fresh roasting, farm-direct sourcing, and trained "store energy" turned his family's Iranian nut-shop tradition into a growing Canadian retail chain.
Amir's father Ayoub started working in a nut shop in Iran at 14. He went on to open his own shop and trained a generation of family members who now run nut stores across the Middle East, where these shops are as common as coffee shops. Amir took over the Canadian business in 2014 with a Howard Schultz–style bet: if he Westernized the concept and delivered on quality and service, North Americans would stop buying nuts off the grocery shelf. Today Ayoub's has eight locations, with Victoria and its first U.S. store in Seattle on the way.
Kenny walked into two Ayoub's stores as a regular customer and was surprised by the service, so we brought Amir on. He explains how he tries to systemize something most retailers leave to chance: a store's "magnetic presence." He covers why paying more doesn't keep good people but a real career path does, why every assistant manager is expected to train their own replacement, and what Starbucks and Lululemon teach about keeping energy consistent as you scale.
We also get into the supply chain. Ayoub's imports directly, buying organic almonds from a family farm in Spain and cashews from a farmer in Vietnam, and roasts in-store. That replaces a grocery supply chain that can run six to seven months from farm to pantry. Amir also explains why fresh means no preservatives, which is why his team makes its own jam for its cookies.
Check out Ayoub's here: https://ayoubs.ca/

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/