This Commerce Life

Ashley Sauve was 12 years old when she started selling mini straw bales to Canadian Tire stores from her family's cash crop farm. Today, she owns Sauve's Country Market in South Woodslee, Ontario — a destination farm market in Windsor-Essex County that customers happily drive 45 minutes to visit, even though there's no gas station, grocery store, or Tim Hortons anywhere nearby. In this episode, As...

Special thursday episode: Julie Therrien of Biscuits Leclerc is back — and this time we're picking her brain on one of the biggest opportunities for Canadian food and beverage brands right now: exporting to Mexico. Julie's export career started in Mexico in the mid-90s, and she's spent nearly 30 years navigating the market — from co-packing for Bimbo to building branded distribution across Mexican...

What happens when a food scientist and a hairstylist-turned-entrepreneur team up to reinvent cottage cheese? You get Fromage Protein Pops — a frozen treat that started with a $90 thrifted cart, 170+ recipe iterations, and a whole lot of sister chemistry. In this episode, Phil Chang and Kenny Vannucci sit down with co-founders Nuala and Fiona to talk about: 🍦 How a trip to Japan and a "better-for-...

Andy Mollica, founder of Anducci's, joins Phil Chang and Kenny Vannucci for an unfiltered look at one of Vancouver's most legendary Italian food stories. Andy shares how he opened his first pasta bar at 19 years old, built Anducci's into a 27-year East Van institution, and accidentally pioneered Costco's Home Meal Replacement (HMR) category by selling lasagnas out of his car trunk to Costco's orig...

If your brand is trying to scale across Canada, this episode is essential listening. Phil and Kenny sit down with Matthew James, President & CEO of Purity Life Health Products — Canada's largest and only full-service wellness distributor covering dry, frozen, and refrigerated products across all channels, coast to coast. Matthew shares his 33-year journey in the Canadian natural health industry —...

Zane Caplansky opened what's considered Toronto's first pop-up restaurant — a deli inside a dive bar in Little Italy — and turned it into one of the city's most beloved institutions. Along the way he appeared on Dragon's Den three times, got featured on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives and You Gotta Eat Here, ran a food truck, a catering empire, and a College Street restaurant that had lineups for year...

What do you do when the brand you built to over $100 million goes bankrupt — and then you get the chance to buy it back? That's exactly what Amelia Warren and Kyle Vucko did with Epicure. In this episode, Phil and Kenny sit down with the co-managing directors of the relaunched Epicure — a Canadian spice and seasoning brand with a fiercely loyal customer base, a surprising MLM origin story, and a b...

Phil and Kenny sit down with Bonnie Joyce — the photographer and web designer behind some of the best headshots This Commerce Life has ever had (which, admittedly, is a low bar). Bonnie runs Bonnie Joyce Creative Studio, a photography and Wix web design business based in Eastern Ontario, where she's built over 500 websites and shot everything from brand sessions to adoption hearings. In this episo...

The survival math behind Vancouver's independent restaurant scene — and why cheap food is never actually cheap. Phil and Kenny sit down with Robert Belcham — a 35-year Vancouver chef, restaurateur behind Campanolo, Monarch Burger, and Poppina Canteen, and board member of the Chef's Table Society of BC — for one of the most candid conversations about the business of food we've ever had on This Comm...

Julie Therrien has spent 28 years selling Canadian cookies to the world — and she's got the stories to prove it. As Western Canada Sales Rep for Biscuits Leclerc (the family behind Celebration Cookies, Go Pure bars, and that iconic air travel snack you definitely know),  Julie joins Kenny and Phil to talk about her unlikely path from Quebec City to Guadalajara to Vancouver, what it really takes to...

If you're a Canadian food or beverage brand wondering why retailers keep asking for a distributor, this episode is your answer. Phil and Kenny sit down with Stacey Kravitz, President of UNFI Canada, for one of the most important conversations we've had on the show. Stacey brings 20+ years at Kraft and Kraft Heinz — and nearly 10 years leading UNFI Canada through COVID, supply chain chaos, and a ra...

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 brandi...

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 journe...

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 en...

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...

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 o...

Phil and Kenny pull up a chair for a candid check-in — no guest, no agenda, just an honest conversation about where This Commerce Life has been, where it's going, and why what they do matters more than ever for Canadian food and beverage brands. After 460+ episodes and eight years in, Phil and Kenny reflect on a pivotal shift: This Commerce Life was never just a podcast — it was always an educatio...

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...

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...

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, t...

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...

When Vikki decided to rescue horses with no teeth, she didn't realize it would lead to opening a thriving feed and farm supply business.  In this episode, Vikki and her husband Rob share how Topline Feed and Farm Supply started as a way to "supplement the horses" and evolved into a community hub in Tavistock, Ontario. From navigating the challenges of rural retail and competing with big-box stores...

From Salt Spring Island to Small-Town Retail: Angela Donnelly on Running Raise the Root Organic Market Angela Donnelly, founder of Raise the Root Organic Market in Caledon, Ontario, shares her journey from working on her parents' mobile produce truck on Salt Spring Island to opening her own natural foods store. Angela talks about learning the produce business at Vancouver's terminal markets, the t...

Andrew Warburton from Peak Beverage Co. joins Phil and Kenny to share his journey building a premium fruit soda brand in BC's competitive beverage market. From launching with minimal research to now being in 175+ stores across Western Canada, Andrew opens up about the realities of scaling a local CPG brand. In this conversation, you'll hear about Peak's channel strategy—why food service and wineri...

Building Canada's Next Generation of Retail Leaders with Dr. Janice Rudkowski Ever wonder where retail professionals actually learn their craft? Dr. Janice Rudkowski from Toronto Metropolitan University's School of Retail Management joins Phil and Kenny to discuss Canada's only undergraduate degree program dedicated exclusively to retail education. From merchandise planning and supply chain logist...