The second day of SIAL featured another full agenda, including the SIAL Pitch Competition, which is always interesting. There were 16 pitches: 12 in the product category and 4 in the food technology category. I’ll do a separate post about the pitch competition – and the winners – soon.
Here I want to talk a bit about a couple vendors that piqued my interest for very different reasons.
The Pie Commission
The one booth I knew I was going to look for at SIAL was The Pie Commission’s. I live in the west end of Toronto and The Pie Commission’s first shop was near me. The company, which was started in 2012, is known for its meat pies and its cute logo. Their first store was on a little side street that you kind of had to know how to find.
Turns out, people found the shop once word got out about how good their pies are. Then the company moved their shop to a bigger location that also was a bit easier to find. Good for them, I thought – they must be doing well. Soon I noticed that I could buy Pie Commission products at other specialty food stores – another good sign. And in the past couple months I noticed they were moving into a bigger building not too far from their original location. It’s so big, they’ll be manufacturing there.
Last month I got an email about the SIAL show and it previewed a few exhibitors from the Grocery Sector. I smiled when I saw The Pie Commission’s logo. I dropped them a line to ask about their participation in SIAL and they suggested I stop in at their booth for a brief chat. SIAL is the first big trade show they’ve taken a booth at. Allison Genovese, who does sales and marketing for them, explained that they did a regional show sponsored by Sobeys and it went well, so they thought they’d test the waters at SIAL.
Though I always think of them for meat pies, at SIAL I learned they’ve expanded their product line to include sausage rolls and butter tarts. In fact, their pecan butter tart won Best in Show at Ontario’s Best Butter Tart Contest in 2024. The 6-pack of tarts are baked and frozen, which means you just thaw and serve. Yum…
They’re participating in SIAL now because they’re interested in expanding across Canada and into the U.S. In terms of going into the U.S. market, Genovese said they’re open to doing so as a white label product.
Food is a complicated business
Taste and nutrition are what I focus on when I grocery shop. Like many people, I don’t think much about bacteria and food safety – I take it for granted. Lucky for us, we don’t generally have to worry about things like listeria because there are people in the agro-food industry that are working on ways of ensuring food safety.
I was reminded of this when I came across the Innodal booth. What caught my eye was a video playing on a screen that showed a conveyor belt with what looked like sides of beef tenderloin being sprayed with something. The booth was featuring a product called Inneo. Curious, I stopped and chatted with Laurent Dallaire, CEO of Innodal, a Quebec company.
Dallaire, a biotech engineer and his partner François Bédard, a chemist, developed a natural, peptide-based antimicrobial processing aid that reduces the risk of contamination by listeria spp. Inneo can be directly applied on red meat, poultry, fruits, vegetables, fish, seafood and cheese and it can also be stirred into prepared foods. Dallaire explained that Inneo doesn’t have a taste or odour and it doesn’t leave any residue on the food. And, since it is a processing aid – not an ingredient or additive – it doesn’t need to be added to a product’s list of ingredients. It has been approved by both Health Canada and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Dallaire says they’re working on a natural antimicrobial processing aid to reduce the risk of E. coli and salmonella.
