“I’ve always been interested in the CPG industry—ever since I was a young kid,” she admits. “When I was nine years old, I sent ad campaign ideas and product recommendations to some of my favourite toys and treat companies, and luckily, they engaged and responded to me. I loved the idea of improving products to make them more enjoyable for me and my friends. At the time, I wasn’t thinking too much about it, but it was ultimately the foundation of my passion for consumers. So, it’s only natural that this enthusiasm led me to the CPG industry.”

Despite her enthusiasm for the industry, Thompson’s journey from nine-year-old corporate advisor to GM of Mars Wrigley Canada was anything but a straight line.

“I started my career in a completely different industry, but I could never replicate the excitement and enthusiasm that I found as a nine-year-old passionate about consumer products,” she says.

While she enjoys the diversity the CPG industry offers, she definitely has a favourite. “I’ve been with Mars for 13 years and have always felt passionate about my work, whether it’s ice cream, pet care or confectionery,” she explains. “But I must say, the great thing about coming back to confection is I get to be both a marketer and a consumer of what we produce. And personally, I love sharing the products with my kids and seeing their excitement for the brands.”

Understanding the consumer

In addition to a degree in general management and marketing, Thompson also has a degree in psychology, which she says has helped her better understand consumers.

“I’ve found that my psychology degree has helped immensely throughout my career,” she says. “In an industry where consumers have such personal memories and feelings tied to the products, it’s especially important to understand what drives them, what brings them joy, but also what turns them off.”

This understanding of human psychology, she adds, has also helped her better manage employees.

“True leadership is all about understanding people, figuring out what you can do to support them, helping them achieve their goals and ambitions, and taking care of the whole person,” she says. “And just as in marketing, understanding motivational triggers is very helpful in not only getting the best out of your team, but also in fostering and retaining your talent.”

Challenges and opportunities

Thompson is well aware of the pain today’s consumers experience when they see the price of groceries edging upwards, week after week.

“In our industry and beyond, affordability is top of mind for everyone,” she says. “We make every effort to minimize costs to provide a full range of delicious products while making sure we preserve both the value and quality of our iconic brands.”

While affordability will continue to be an issue with consumers, Thompson is committed to navigating the choppy waters ahead.

“My goal is for Mars to lead the pack and show the industry what’s possible when you lead with purpose, never compromise on quality and centre your decisions around consumer insights,” she concludes.

This article was originally published in the April/May 2024 issue of Food in Canada.

“I was drawn to Gay Lea Foods for many reasons,” she says, “one of which is the fact that’s it’s a co-operative, and that’s something that really appealed to me, having worked in big multinationals for over two decades.”

Dalrymple’s previous experience with a private company, as well as a large public company, helped her see the difference a co-operative like Gay Lea Foods can make.

“Gay Lea measures success not only by the value that we create, but also the value that we give back,” she says. “We’re really committed to finding the right balance between delivering performance, developing our people, and doing right by our community. That was really appealing as I was thinking about my next move.”

Gay Lea Foods’ rich history was also appealing to Dalrymple.

“I feel really privileged to be working for a business that was started in 1958 by a group of dairy farmers, who for generations, through hard work and determination have built Gay Lea into a sizeable and meaningful business that’s really committed to furthering the dairy industry.”

Dalrymple is well aware of the bigger picture that defines what Gay Lea Foods values as an organization.

“It’s a great opportunity and a great responsibility,” she explains. “I don’t know if I feel more or less pressure working for a group of dairy farmers, but it’s all about how we stay true to our values, and how we make smart decisions that will ultimately lead to a better tomorrow, so that we can have a home for our members’ milk and build a sustainable and growing dairy industry.”

Walking the talk

According to Dalrymple, as a co-operative, Gay Lea Foods is focused on more than just the next quarter. “It’s really rooted in the values of balancing profits, the people, and the planet,” she says. “I think a lot of companies nowadays talk that way, but Gay Lea has been committed [to this philosophy] for generations, and Gay Lea really does make a difference, does think about long-term sustainable growth and the impact on communities, in almost equal measure.”

Like any other segment of the economy, the dairy industry is facing several challenges, including trade issues and the need for innovation. These issues, however, don’t intimidate Dalrymple. Rather, she feels energized, excited and is eager to tackle them head-on.

“I’m in year one of our five-year strategic plan,” she says. “I’ve got a lot of heavy lifting to deliver the next five years, and I’m doing it with a great team. So that’s my focus. It’s still early days, and I’m excited about what we’ve been able to accomplish in a short period of time. It’s been great working with both the board of directors, as well as the management team and all the employees. I’m excited about seeing all this through.”

This article was originally published in the April/May 2024 issue of Food in Canada.

“I come from a family of entrepreneurs. My mom’s an entrepreneur, my grandmother was an entrepreneur, my great-grandmother was an entrepreneur, so I feel like entrepreneurship runs in my blood. As a child, I was always told to create my own destiny. So that was kind of instilled in me growing up,” recalled Bednarski-Malik.

Her passion for food and nutrition eventually led her to become a dietitian as well as attend culinary school. Her professional quest then became one of finding ways to merge her culinary skills and nutrition. Sadly, a health issue pumped the brakes on her plans and made her focus on healing herself.

“It took me two years to recover from an eating disorder. During that process, I reconnected with food and found my love for food again,” said Bednarski-Malik.

In 2014, she decided to create foods that made her feel good. She began experimenting with kale.

“I love vegetables. I would eat these kale chips, and I felt okay. They’re healthy, low in sugar, nutrient dense, and I could feel good about eating them,” she said.

Julie Bednarski-Malik, MHSc, PHEc, RD.

Starbucks as partner

Bednarski-Malik wasn’t the only one who liked the kale chips; her friends and family members found it delicious too. Thus began Healthy Crunch in 2014. It was also fortuitous that her first customer was Starbucks.

Bednarski-Malik was making her kale chips at a collective kitchen where she was renting a table by the hour. During a networking event at the kitchen, Bednarski-Malik offered her chips to a woman who wanted to share them with her friend. She didn’t know then, but the friend was Rossann Williams, head of Starbucks North America at that time. As the story goes, Williams loved the kale chips and contracted Healthy Crunch to make them for Starbucks.

“We started off with one really great partner who believed in us. And Starbucks was such a great customer to launch with because they have a [huge] brand presence. When you’re in Starbucks, people believe you’re legitimate. One year after launching in Starbucks, we had tremendous growth,” she recalled.

The company ended up with listings at Costco, Shoppers Drug Mart, Loblaws, and Ikea.

“Our kale chips were everywhere; all over Canada, in airports and movie theatres. Cineplex was selling our kale chips. kale was on trend at the time,” she said. “It was the colour of the year. It was just about being at the right place at the right time. I think all the stars were aligned for it to happen.”

The success was immensely appreciated because kale chips is a challenging product to manufacture. It’s a three-day process. Bednarski-Malik also faced supply issues.

“There are not that many kale chips out there right now because it’s very fragile. It takes a long time to make. You’re using fresh ingredients. Sometimes kale is fluffy and sometimes it’s not. There are so many variables to it,” she explained.

Despite the challenges, Healthy Crunch continued making its flagship product. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, they couldn’t source the required amount of kale, and the company had to discontinue its most popular product.

Beyond chips

This decision kick-started the next phase of Healthy Crunch, which celebrates its 10^th anniversary this year (If you’re missing their kale chips, Healthy Crunch has relaunched it as part of their anniversary celebrations). It currently has more than 120 vegan, school-approved products, such as seed butters and jams, granola bars, trail mixes, crispy squares, dark chocolates and instant lattes. Their most popular products are granola bars and dark chocolates.

“We have to be super unique, but we also don’t want to be too unique where we have to educate the customer,” she explained. “We launched into categories where consumers know the product.”

For instance, jams, but with a Healthy Crunch twist, meaning reduced sugar, increased fibre, a clean ingredient deck without additives, colourings and preservatives. Another example is their nutrient-dense crispy squares instead of the full-on sugar rush that comes with typical rice crispies.

Bednarski-Malik chose this middle ground because consumer awareness takes a long time and resources. For a lean company like Healthy Crunch with only 12 employees, it’s not profitable to be launching uber niche products and spending thousands of dollars in raising awareness about new product categories.

Healthy Crunch manufactures its products out of a SQF level two certified facility in Mississauga, Ont. The products are free of 11 major food allergens, which comes out of Bednarski-Malik’s desire to make healthy eating inclusive. They have more than 20,000 points of distribution.

Healthy Crunch products are also sold in the U.S., the U.K. and the Middle East. After a decade of sustained growth, Bednarski-Malik is now ready to expand into other markets.

“There are a lot of major U.S. retailers that we want to launch into like Target and some other larger product categories too. I’m also thinking of launching into Europe, as there’s so much opportunity over there,” she said.

Bednarski-Malik strongly feels Healthy Crunch has the potential to take advantage of the whitespace in the global better-for-you category.

Hans Dairy makes yogurt products, smoothies, fluid milk for further processing, rice pudding, and a butter line. The company’s USP is its clean ingredient deck and taste that offers a home-made feel.

“Everything we buy is local. Our philosophy is 95 per cent of the ingredients, packaging, etc. are procured from Canadian companies. We try our hardest to sustain the circular economy here,” explains Sarab.

Hans Dairy specializes in South Asian dairy products.

Retirement plans delayed

The genesis of Hans Dairy is quite inspiring. In their 60s, an age when most people hang up their work boots, Sarab’s father, an engineer, and mother, a customer service representative, decided to do something for themselves.

As first-generation immigrants, they found limited food options, and nothing that tasted desi. They decided to create authentic Indian products that were just like the food they grew up with. Their flagship product was Indian-style yogurt or dahi, which, full disclosure, is a staple in the author’s home.

Sarab wanted to join the business after finishing university–she has a bachelor’s degree in political science from University of Western Ontario, London, Ont., and an MBA in finance and strategy from McGill University, Montreal. However, her parents refused to grant her a free pass. They instead asked her to work elsewhere and gain relevant experience. Therefore, Sarab worked in investment banking in New York, Tokyo, and Amsterdam. 

When her parents were nearing 70 and wanted to retire, they asked Sarab to take over.

“At that time, the business was set up in bricks and mortar. We had the equipment. They had a customer base and I thought that if I don’t jump in now, I’m never going to have this opportunity again. So I gave my notice, moved back to Toronto into my parents’ home and started working with them,” recalls Sarab.

Indian-style yogurt or dahi was the first Hans Dairy product to launch in big box stores.

Not the owner’s daughter

The transition was not without challenges, but Sarab was laser-focused on growing Hans Dairy. She spent a year on the production floor, learning everything about dairy food/beverage production.

“I had to take my pasteurizer’s course  and my grader’s certification. I was able to learn a lot about the various manufacturing elements like steam boilers, pneumatics, cleaning process, engineering, etc. This gave me a knowledge base that allowed me to then have conversations with people,” Sarab explains.

She also didn’t shy away from asking for help. “I think sometimes when we come into a position where we’re expected to be the leader, we feel like we need to show that we know everything, but when you don’t know everything, that is really the wrong way to approach it. So I asked when I needed to. People were very helpful, and I was surprised at how forthcoming they were with information. This way, I built a connection with people. They knew that I was here not to dictate what was going on, but to build the business from the down up,” she adds.

Sarab inherited a company with all male employees, predominantly from the South Asian community. Initially, it was challenging to get them to respond in the manner she wanted because they sometimes perceived her as the owner’s daughter and not the company’s head.

As a woman of South Asian origins, Sarab had to deal with certain unconscious biases. A patriarchal thinking that’s quite pervasive in South Asian communities assumes women would eventually stop working and become full-time moms. Sarab was often asked, “What is going to happen when you have children? Who is going to run your business?” As Sarab says, people thought Hans Dairy was almost her pet project, and “I was doing it part time until my ‘real life’ started, which was family, children, and household stuff. When someone views you in that perspective, they don’t take you seriously. Secondly, you’re not invited to those social gatherings where business deals happen or those connections are made, so that for sure has held us [women] back. But on the other end, maybe it gave us some extra steam to prove everybody wrong.”

Another challenge was finding mentors. It took her about 12 years to find good mentors. Thankfully, Sarab is now part of an organization of women CEOs, which has been supportive. The group meets monthly and helps members with whatever issues, such as HR and technology, they’re facing. She also has one-on-one mentors within the dairy industry who help her with business strategies. Sarab’s third source of mentors, and maybe the most precious one, are her family members and friends. Sarab’s sister Mandeep is also in the business; she’s the marketing director of Hans Dairy.

“Women need to support women that they affiliate with because that’s the only way we’re going to pull each other up. And that’s the only way we’re going to make it more of an equal playing field,” adds Sarab.

A clean ingredient deck and a homemade feel are hallmarks of Hans Dairy products.

Achievements

Slowly, but steadily, Sarab grew Hans Dairy. Her most memorable moment was in 2008 when the first sku of Hans Dairy Dahi was launched in big box chains.

“Finally we broke in. We’re in, and now we have a launching pad for a lot of other things,” she explains.

Her biggest achievement to-date would be building Hans Dairy’s current manufacturing facility. About eight years ago, the company hit capacity at the place they were in. They could either hire a co-packer or build a new plant. It was a difficult decision due to the risky investment, but they decided to buy a piece of land and build a facility that suited the company.

“It was such a great choice to have that space to expand in, to own it yourself. You can make any improvements and not be worried about having to move again,” says Sarab.

Diversifying the workforce

As mentioned earlier, Hans, largely, had male employees. Sarab has tried hard to diversify the workforce.

“If I wanted women to come into the manufacturing side and stay, I needed to make sure that I had at least two to three women because otherwise they felt a little isolated. Nobody was engaging with them. So, the work environment work wasn’t as fun as it should be,” she explains.

Hiring in pairs has paid off, as it’s almost a 50-50 split in the back for men and women. Hans Dairy has also implemented a referral program. “People that are here understand what the real work is at the factory. They refer people. Once the new people join, the employees who referred them get a bonus. That’s really helped us get good people,” explains Sarab.

Future plans

Hans Dairy is developing a buffalo yogurt line, a flavoured whipped butter line, and a Middle Eastern dairy product line, so watch out for these.

Advocacy

Besides running her company, Sarab is also an advocate for the industry, as a board member of Food and Beverage Ontario. She urges people who are interested in food manufacturing to simply ‘jump in.’

“I think that there’s room for everybody. When I joined the industry, one of my father’s friends gave me advice that ‘don’t steal market share, create it’. If you have a product that’s not available on the market and it’s unique and different, there’s tons of room in this country because we’re so multicultural. There are so many different, diverse appetites out there. It may take you longer than if you were making something that already existed, but there’s room for that,” she encourages.

She also asks women who are entering/joining family businesses to not fall into the supporting role.

“If you’re the leader, make sure you’re the leader. If there is someone in your organization, be it family that does not want to see you as a leader and is undermining your authority, you need to have that person pivot out or make sure they understand who’s the boss because you really do not want to be fighting personal battles in your business,” advises Sarab. 

This article was originally published in the October 2023 issue of Food in Canada.