Today I am speaking with Sheena Russell. Sheena is founder & CEO of Made with Local, a health snacks company based in Nova Scotia. What started as a farmer's market table in 2012 has grown into a nationally-distributed brand known for delicious Real Food Bars and their innovative social-impact production model. You can find Made with Local's products in 1000 retailers all across Canada!
This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media. This series is a platform for women, female-identified, & non-binary individuals to share their professional stories and personal narrative as it relates to their story. This podcast is designed to hold a space for all individuals to learn from their counterparts regardless of age, status, or industry.
TRANSCRIPTION
*Please note, this is an automated transcription please excuse any typos or errors
[00:00:00] In this episode, I speak with founder and CEO of Made with Local Sheena Russell, made with Local as a health snacks company based in Nova Scotia. Key points addressed where Sheena's launch of Made with Local and the ethos behind the company culture and brand. We also discussed her incredible efforts to keep made with local, sustainable, responsible, made locally with local ingredients and filled with good intentions and love. Stay tuned for my awesome chat with Sheena Russell.
[00:00:33] Hi, my name is Patricia Kathleen, and this podcast series contains interviews I conduct with women. Female identified and non binary individuals regarding their professional stories and personal narrative. This podcast is designed to hold a space for all individuals to learn from their counterparts regardless of age status for industry. We aim to contribute to the evolving global dialog surrounding underrepresented figures in all industries across the USA and abroad. If you're enjoying this podcast, be sure to check out our subsequent series that dove deep into specific areas such as Vegan life, fasting and roundtable topics. They can be found via our Web site. Patricia Kathleen ARCOM, where you can also join our newsletter. You can also subscribe to all of our series on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Pod Bean and YouTube. Thanks for listening. Now let's start the conversation.
[00:01:31] Hi, everyone, and welcome back. I'm your host, Patricia. And today we are sitting down with Sheena Russell. Sheena is the founder and CEO of Made with Local. You can find out more about it and our conversation about everything we impact today at w w w dot made local made with local dot s.a. Welcome, Sheena.
[00:01:51] Thank you so much.
[00:01:52] Thanks for coming on. I'm excited to talk to you and unpack everything for everyone listening. And we'll give you a brief bio on Sheena before I start peppering her with questions. But prior to that roadmap for today's podcast, just so for those of you that are new, can kind of follow along and realize we're we're kind of pulling all of our inquiries from we'll first look at unpacking Sheena's academic and professional background and then we'll turn straight to unpacking made with local and we'll first look at the logistics and then turn some of our inquiry towards the ethos and the philosophy behind the company, which it pulls heavily for it being a B corp and things of that nature. And then we'll turn towards goals and plans that Sheena has built for herself and made with local moving forward for the next one to three years. This is an area that has changed greatly with a lot of people with the most recent COVID 19 pandemic upon us. And we'll wrap everything up with goals, advice that Tina may have for those of you who are looking to get involved, maybe emulate some of her success and OK. So before we get started, a quick bio on Sina Sina. Russell is founder and CEO of Made with Local, a health snacks company based in Nova Scotia. What started as a farmer's market table in 2012 has grown into a nationally distributed brand known for delicious real food bars and their innovative social impact production model. You can find made with locals products in a thousand retailers across all across Canada. So again, their website is w w w dot made with local dot C eight. So she not prior to R before we jump in to kind of unpacking meat with local and I love it. I like, I really kind of climb through all of the aspects of your website and I can't wait to kind of pepper you with questions.
[00:03:33] But before we get to that, I was hoping you could kind of describe your academic and professional background prior to launching the company.
[00:03:42] Sure. So I grew up on PTI. Born and raised, rural Prince Edward Island girl. And out of high school, I did one year at the University of Prince Edward Island and then recognize that it kind of felt like high school 2.0.
[00:03:58] Now, I got home Hometown University and applied to go to Dalhousie University here in Halifax and got accepted. Which is really exciting. So I was one of the first people in my pretty large extended family to go off island for post-secondary. So I got accepted into DOWL to do a Bachelor of Science at the Focus and Environmental Sustainability.
[00:04:21] So that was perfectly in line with, you know, my passion as even as a kid. Now, I've always been really sustainability and, you know, environmentally conscious minded even as a 10 year old. So that was always my path. Right. I ended up at DILE to do a bachelors degree and then pretty quickly moved into a great job for a young person, especially after having just graduated. And a government municipal position doing education for the City of Halifax's recycling program. So it was kind of like felt like the jackpot at the time. And and. Yeah.
[00:05:03] So that was, that was the job that I was working when I started. Made with local as a side hustle.
[00:05:10] Nice.
[00:05:11] So I'm wondering, even though you know, and we'll get into the ethos and how much that really does unite with this, like recycling education program that sounds like you just started with. But it seems like entrepreneurship is not just necessarily a progression will step in a lot of people's lives. It's this kind of different trait that one has to have starting to farmer's markets. We've talked to a couple of companies over the past three years that have really gotten their footing in farmers markets. And I think it's an area that a lot of people who start with a product based startup don't realize is like this wonderful nesting place, at least in the United States. I don't know how much it varies in Canada. I have not meant to a Canadian farmer's market, but it's this great place where you get this culmination of testing for immediate feedback. You know, there's there's all of these very quick things that larger companies or companies that don't have access to their consumers or their customers get at a farmer's market. And I'm wondering, when you started, did you intend on going beyond the farmer's market or were did you just want to bring a product to farmers market?
[00:06:16] Yeah, I completely agree with you in that the farmers markets are like the ultimate CPG incubator. Right. And I can't imagine having started a brand without having the invaluable experience of being a farmer's market table for two years. Because, you know, you get to test your pricing.
[00:06:34] You get to literally see your customers with your own two eyeballs and hear how you know, what questions they have about the product and what flavors they tend to gravitate to and how many they buy at a time. And it's just like so juicy. But at the time, I didn't realize what was happening. Right. It's all hindsight for me. At the time, I was 100 percent was just like, this is just this fun little thing that I'm doing on the side. And it felt it felt, you know, really comfortable. Right. And it was definitely tons of work, but not having. Not ever imagining that I was going to be an entrepreneur as a kid. And the young adults like I could be, I really just couldn't even fathom how far this company has gone. And those really early days, like every step we took from the farmer's market, get into wholesale relationships with cafes and some small grocery stores. Every single step felt monumental. And yeah, and, you know, it still feels like that sometimes today, even being in a thousand stores. Coast to coast. But the intention was not right off the get go to get huge. But now I look back and I cherish those farmer's market days because they just were so important.
[00:07:50] Yeah. One and probably for the better. I think that the problem with a lot of entrepreneurs and I do love dreaming big and so there is that other side of it. But I think a lot of entrepreneurs, you know, particularly of Latter Day, like, they tend to be like, you know, it's it's a one point two million gross.
[00:08:06] You know, it's this these great, huge dreams. But it seems like everything underneath that is depressing or less then. So this idea that you had that you were just kind of going to keep going in and celebrating every small success along the way sounds like a happier route, maybe definitely more Canadian. I have a new Canadian friends that sound very like I like that kind of optimism.
[00:08:28] I want to start unpacking it now, since we've kind of hinted all around it and we've got into made with local. So my interest in it. So in the beginning, for all the like nerdy little founders listening out there, can you get into the logistics of the when was it founded?
[00:08:43] And did you have co-founders? Did you bootstrap? Did you take funding and and what products did you launch with?
[00:08:50] Sure. So we started in 2012. And when I say we I co-founded the company with a friend at the time. She was also working for the municipality of Halifax here. So we were work buddies that turned into co-founders. And she she became pregnant with her first child pretty early on in the business. So and I at that point had been fully bitten by the entrepreneurial bug. So pretty early on in the life of the company, I started moving more into like a primary founder role. We launched at the Halifax Seaport Farmer's Market with four Skewes while editing call excuse the time for flavors of bars that were made with local ingredients.
[00:09:27] So Canadian grown oats, honey, from a local supplier, Canadian made nut and seed butters, cranberries, blueberries, just as many ingredients as we could sourced from our region as possible. And this was really at the beginning of the locavore movement. Farmer's markets were becoming much more of a mainstream thing and it was just perfect timing.
[00:09:49] And in 2012, there also weren't the endless number of energy and protein bars that exist today. Like now, it's arguably the most competitive category within natural food, but then it wasn't. So we really did stand out and we continued to stand out in that way and that we've retained those local suppliers. Many of the same suppliers we started with the farmer's market are still our suppliers today, and we've grown their businesses because of our growth and also our process. Our manufacturing process is is still very high touch and and has this incredible social impact, ripple effect that happens because we partner with social enterprises to run our production bakeries. So that happened in twenty fourteen. We started with our social enterprise model that allowed us to scale the company because as most founders know, when you're in the food products space, at a certain point you're gonna have to hand off your manufacturing to somebody else.
[00:10:51] And it feels scary as hell. But it's the only way that you can get out of the weeds and start growing your company. And that's what we did in 2012. But instead of nursery in 2014, but instead of going to, you know, a big Copac or a big manufacturing plant, we created this beautiful relationship with an organization here in Nova Scotia that employs folks who have barriers to the mainstream workforce.
[00:11:17] And they started making our for us and that, you know, six years ago they were making a few hundred birds a week and now they're doing, you know, 10, 20 times that. And we've scaled them up as our growth has continued on. And it's just been a really beautiful partnership.
[00:11:36] Yeah. And I want to make this clear for everyone listening, because I think some of these terms can be glossed over. And to understand it from a manufacturing or from a founding point of view is crucial. And you have a video on your website, Riverlands Listening, that actually does a very good job.
[00:11:49] I'm very into visual interpretation of things like that, and this does a very good job of that as well. So for those of you listening, we want to hit it, hit that video up on made with local thought s.A.
[00:11:58] But the every one of your products is handmade. It's this is not a machine made process, you know. And I think that that's crucial to understand as you start to ramp things up and as you've. Source. I think immediately when people go to outsourcing, they go to this this industry manufacturing warehouse machine made moment. You know, that's just what happens. And it's about quality control. Is it does it taste the same? And you have this very obvious link with the ethos and the philosophy of your company that it needs to be, you know, human to and touched human intended. Your website states love, period, nourish, period, community, period. And it seems like, you know, that you have stretched and and really fought to maintain those three core aspects. And that's even through like the making and packaging of these things in the communities that you've outsourced to do that with.
[00:12:52] And I think it's kind of crucial. I want to get into. I am curious because this is a realm that I've never worked with or funded or done anything like that. Food is something I tend to stay away from. I study it from afar, you know, and I eat very well. But as far as making it in mass quantities, it be terrifying for me.
[00:13:11] I want to know how when you started creating the products. There's so many things to consider, right? There is there is not just the source that it comes from sustainability, agriculture, things that you've obviously considered, you know, being a B corp and things like that. But what about allergies? How did you select flavors? What made you even go into bars? Did you. Were you just making these on the side, like for Fonzie's with your, you know, the recycling and education program? Like, how did all of it come to be as to that was the product that you were going to do?
[00:13:41] Right. So I you know, I look back to 2012 when we first started and all of it was just like so pure, you know, and like innocent, like, I never imagined that I'd be running, you know, a seven figure company today.
[00:13:57] Like, it's just, you know, and so the intentions in the beginning were just to create this really beautiful products using as many local ingredients as we could.
[00:14:08] And another time, I wasn't thinking about, oh, you know, we should do raw bars instead of baked because that will be easier to scale, you know, or we should use this type of sweetener instead of this because, you know, it'll work better in equipment like it was never like it was none of that conscious thought in the beginning, because that just really wasn't on my radar. But, you know, when it comes to, you know, allergens and key features like the differentiator for us in the early days and it continues to be so is that we're using, like, literal food, no foods like ingredients. So things like oats, peanut butter, honey, cranberries or Fairtrade organic dark chocolate, real ingredients with no preservatives. No, no weird sh*t. Yeah. And in that, you know, we weren't. And local. Right. Handmade. Local and real life. These are the things that we're going to differentiate us from the countless number of bars that sit on store shelves that are literally like kind of like a paste that squeezed out of a tube and then just enrobed and some like weird chocolate esq kind of layer. That is the vast majority of protein and energy bars that you're seeing in most grocery grocery store shelves. And there's a reason why there's so little variation in the flavor and texture of so many bars because they're all kind of squeezed on the same extruder machines. And you have to reverse engineer your formulations to work with the equipment. The the way that's mass manufacturing is means that you are restricted to a certain type of texture and and an ingredient stack. And we've just kind of, you know, so screwed up. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:15:51] You have to you they all taste. I have to say, I'm probably a little jaded. I'm not a fan of like over ninety nine percent of the bars out there. I feel like they actually got worse after the launch. And then you had labels and different things.
[00:16:06] And I don't want to call people out, even the billionaires out there, because I'm not looking to hate on anyone, but even the ones with simple names, you know? And that seemed like like like honest or whatever, like all of these different. I taste them and they don't they don't taste like anything that was on the label. I don't taste any of the nuts in there. I don't taste any chocolate. I don't taste. It's just like sludge. I think you have the most perfect description for what I taste. It sound it feels like something that came out of a tube like astronauts. It literally is known to live. Yeah. Like it was not intended to be like fresh from my organic farmhouse table. It was more like.
[00:16:44] Yeah, that type of.
[00:16:46] That's what the experience feels like. And I think you train yourself to like it, like people who are very in dubah as I have some girlfriends that are extreme athletes and it's a lot like that gel that they eat when they do their extreme running, it's kind of slam them. It's not an experience of food. It's different from eating. It's like and that's kind of how they've trained themselves to have it.
[00:17:05] And so I agree with that. And I think what you're saying is right, that's the manufacturing piece that I got from your site that I was kind of educated into very briefly without putting identifying key factors to that. We did a really good job of just pointing out what you do and then bringing out an awareness in the viewer of what obviously is not being done with other people. You know, this is handmade hand touched. Like, it's very clear that that would make a difference between yours and someone else's. And to that end, I'm wondering, it sounds like your growth has been like organic, but also just like a rag you've been piloting. But kind of as you fly like this like pathway. And I'm wondering, because it has been this, you know, your growth has been this crazy trajectory from farmers markets to now being available everywhere else. And then you have covered, you know, pandemic reaches back into like online. First of all, are you available anywhere internationally? And is that on your horizon or sites? And is it possible, given that your product is so handcrafted?
[00:18:08] Sure, yeah. We are available online to ship internationally. So folks in the US can order through our e-commerce shop and we'll ship to your door. Easy peasy. And we are, you know, be extensive expansion into the US is a couple of years out for us at this point.
[00:18:27] My my intention with this company is to to go deep with the retailers here in Canada first because it's a sustainable way of doing business. And, you know, there's two ways to grow a company. You either sell more in the same stores or you sell into more stores. Right. And ideally, you're doing both. But what you see in a lot of a lot of situations is distribution, growth, but not depth at retail. And we excel at nourishing relationships with retailers like our independent health food stores. We we love that. You know, we work very closely with them. We make sure the staff have have snacks to sample and that they really understand and experience the brand. And we it just feels so much more rich as a brand and as a company. And for me as a founder, to know that we're focusing on really doing really well at the stores that we're in before we take on the next, you know, whatever B chain or next market. So that's our kind of two year goal for now, is to continue to to enrich the relationships here in Canada. But, you know, as has happened many times in our in our past so far, you're speaking to our growth trajectory. We can pull the long and not that we're not pushing the pace. Of course we are. But there's lots of things that have come up for us where we've been pulled into the market by by incredible demand for a product. So, yeah, yeah. We'll we'll see what happens. The intention for now, though, is, is to be a Canadian brand for the next two years in terms of retail. But e-commerce is fair game. Yeah.
[00:20:07] I mean, you say yeah. And you have a lot of like sage wisdom. And I wonder where did you learn as you go? Did you enter? Were you ever in an incubator?
[00:20:15] Where did you capture all these little nuggets? You're like. You know, we want to develop this really solid home base. Like, that's the number one thing that investor would advise, you know, unless they were trying to grow you too quickly and bankrupt you like it's to develop that really sturdy root threshold so that, you know, you have this base to kind of always return to. Where did you. Did you take business courses? Because, I mean, as as awesome as the education for recycling, sounds like it would have tied into that and things of that nature. It feels like you've acquired a great deal more of education. So what I'm curious about is, did you ever go through an incubator or any type of, you know, a like minded system in Canada or any take any business classes? Do you have a mentor or you lean on anything like that?
[00:21:00] So I've never been part of an incubator. I've never taken a business class in university or college, and I read a lot of books and I've had coaching, I've invested in coaching for myself consistently throughout the course of my entrepreneurial journey. You know, I've been at this for for a while. You know, eight years is not nothing, especially, you know, in this day and age where you see businesses kind of come out of the gates guns blazing and, you know, two or three years after already looking to get acquired. We're we're again, like you mentioned earlier on, this kind of organic path. And I think, you know, this this desire to form rich relationships is.
[00:21:45] Is the culture of made with local as well? Right, it's who I am as a person. You know, we have rich relationships within our company with our suppliers like love nourished community. That's the community piece. Right? You don't want to just blast in a load in two, you know, hundreds of stores at a time and then just be like, cool p.c. Good luck with those. That doesn't work. You have to nurture nourish those relationships.
[00:22:06] And so it's just really it's the cultural alignment that that we make sure touches all points of me with OKL, not just among our team members or suppliers, but to the retail space as well. Again, no, I read books, listen to a lot of podcasts and have had some incredible coaches over the course of my business. So that's cool.
[00:22:29] Yeah, business coaching, mentorship. Like, I think that that good old fashioned reading, dear someone returned to it. And I'm curious, I got on your site and I saw the bar.
[00:22:41] And then you also have bar mixes and. And I'm wondering when the advent of those came along. I can't believe it. It seems weird. I would think that in the beginning you just had the bars. But I may perhaps I'm wrong and I would like to know when the bar mixes came along. And with that, if there is a lake coming along, another sibling with another product, or if you're just going to stay with those two for right now.
[00:23:03] Yeah, the bar mix has been something that we've had in kind of like a beta format for now, about two years. My came up with the idea standing in my kitchen at home. I was making bars at home like two and a half years ago. Don't ask me why. I'm like I've thousands of boxes in my office, but for some reason I was at home making bars. And I was just thinking, like, how annoying is this that I need to have all these little bags of different seeds and little odds and ends and it's just like annoying and convenient, right? What if I could literally just dump a pouch into a bowl and make it like a cake mix and make granola bars? So that was my my aha moment home and I could do that. So we launched our real food bar mix back in twenty eighteen. And it was it was challenging to get off the ground. You know, it's a total first a market like there is no other granola bar mix in Canada at that point anywhere. And just even then, looking back, you know, the packaging wasn't descriptive enough. It wasn't educational enough. The name Real Food Bar Mix was like way too much of a mouthful because it's not really descriptive either, because people are like, just what is this thing? So we we iterated on that several times. And then just this year, in the last couple of months, I said, you know what, like we've learned so much through these various iterations of the real food bar mix, like let's let's bring this baby together and completely fresh design of the packaging that includes photography of the finished product. We rebranded it to be called Granola Bar Mix because that's much more palatable. And also happened to launch it in retail during a time when the Nielsen data was telling us that baking categories and grocery stores were experiencing like seven X growth. So we just launched it into a chain of grocery stores here in Canada called Loblaws. They have about 500 stores across Canada.
[00:25:00] And, you know, we all know Cauvery your era, we were seeing the baking aisles ransacked. Right. So we have this super awesome, perfected, tried and tested product that's now on the market are granola bar mix and ready for people to.
[00:25:16] To enjoy so auspicious that time. I mean. Unbelievable. That's amazing. And I do like I did. I saw it and I thought, this is. I like that. Like, I wonder why I hadn't seen more of it. And it seems more trustworthy when you're bought with your bars. Like, I don't the sludge we were talking about, the toothpaste, you know, the stuff that's coming out of you can't get that in. It's like baking mix format because then it would just be a whole bunch of different weird piece like fake powder Slainte. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Of we to your product.
[00:25:48] That granola bar mix is literally like the one tenth batch size of our real of our real food bars. Like it is our recipe. We are teaching you how to make real food bars in your own kitchen. And that's something where. So corvids had also shut down our product, a real food bar production facility here in Nova Scotia on March 13. So three months ago, we lost all ability to make our packaged bars. And it was terrifying because our grocery purchase orders were going through the roof and we were just like, you know, hands up and like, we don't have anything to sell you.
[00:26:21] But again, just being able to to really put the turbo charge behind the granola bar Viks and for it to pick up the slack, so to speak, in that time was was pretty amazing. You know, we were joking like we can't make our bars for you, but you can make our bars for yourself now. So we have granola of our mixes. It was an amazing launch and it's ongoing still. It's really exciting.
[00:26:43] It is. It's clever. And it's it's necessary. It's cool that you came up with it. Just doing in your kitchen. I like the idea of. I thought about it because I am by no means a Martha Stewart, but I have a very creative brain where I would say it's a very like wandering brain.
[00:26:58] And so when I saw it, I was like, oh, you could make them into any shape you wanted. You could do like a cube. You could do like a a bunny mold. You could do like anything you wanted with when you're making your own bars, you know, you can play around with different visual aspects that I thought are like it's creative, it's cool and absolutely back into, like making it one zone.
[00:27:18] Like the one thing that that's the end. You're absolutely right. Like, we we talked to people and have an entire recipes section on our Web site so people can look up recipes with fun and creative ways to make the granola bar mix super easy to make like a little energy balls. We've had people around Christmas time do that with gingerbread man. Like there's just so many fun ways to play with it.
[00:27:40] And my favorite thing about the granola bar, Max, aside from it just being an amazing product, is, again, we've really embedded embedded our values right in the and the execution of this product in that, you know, when we're making our bars, we know that there's literally well baked into them because we have these social enterprise partnerships. But when you buy our granola bar mix to make it at home, you're going to see on the preparation instructions on the back, there's step number four, which includes a little note about taking a 10 second pause to send vibes of love and gratitude and jam bars.
[00:28:17] And then you just move on into pressing them into the pan and putting them in the oven. So we inspire our customers in that moment when they're making our bars to take a little moment to be like, OK, you know what this is? This is real food made by real people and I'm grateful for it. And just a little cute prompts. Take a little pause.
[00:28:36] So I love that I ended up loving. I love it, too. And I don't think it like I would go beyond saying it's cute. Like I used to think I was the only one I would say I can taste. Angry food in restaurants. But I just felt like I could taste food where someone was just like enough with that, you know? And I was very sensitive to it. And I thought I was being frilly and stupid and silly and stupid, just a little silly. And I was Fletching Top Chef. And Tom Colicchio was like that. Food tastes angry. And I was like validated. This amazing American chef is like, now I can taste the anger in it.
[00:29:10] And it's like this hastiness with he was describing even the shock value of the vegetable and things like that. But it's the antithesis or it validates what you're saying with this intention. I think every wonderful chef from, you know, the home chef to the greatest Michelin star would say like that intention and the accuracy and the emotion flowing into it, you can absolutely. It's it's an art. You can feel it. You can interpret it as a person eating it later on. So I love that you put that in there. I think that's. I'm wondering with goals, we talked about how you want to, like, really root into your Canadian stronghold before you start branching too far out. But outside of that. Have you looked at your next one to three years because of the cove? It. You know, it started it must have re solidified this conversation with you where you're like, I'm really glad we launched the, you know, the mixes and things like that. Do you have any other goals on the next one to three year horizon? Aside from like cementing into Canada with product development or anything like that, you're going to look at or are you just going to stay on the path that you've kind of described?
[00:30:16] Yeah, I'm really excited to continue on with developing some more products around this baking mix line. I've joked to some of my team about wanting to dig in on this concept of like millennial baking mixes. Right, like the baking category. It's super dusty.
[00:30:33] And it's just it needs to be there needs to be some reinvigoration in the baking mix category because, you know, man, I know for sure that I can use some kitchen hacks in my life. And I love and I'm very committed to feeding my family simple nourishing foods. But like, sometimes you just different. You need help. You need to act. So I feel very strongly about creating some products that align and extend that product line as a granola bar is doing. So from an R&D perspective, that's where my heart is kind of leading me right now. And then, you know, other things that we're working on, on the manufacturing and our social impact side include creating a second production hub in central Canada and Ontario. And that's something that definitely bucks the trend also of large scale manufacturers, where it's all about centralizing and efficiencies. And, you know, it's just these massive food systems that are efficiency over everything. Right. We've seen through covered that these massive corporate archaic food systems get f*cked up whenever things go sideways. Right. Like, I look at all these meat packing plants and these huge conglomerates, like as soon as there's something really dire happening in the world, they can't they're not agile enough to respond. And who is picking up the slack for that? All the small farmers and food producers and entrepreneurs who can pop up an online shop and a night on Shopify and all of a sudden can service a community or can bring their entire farmer's market online and are now delivering thousands of boxes through community every week. Like it's just incredible, the agility of small scale, decentralized food systems. And that's something that we are using as our model to scale our production, because, you know, people hear our story and they hear about how our bars are handmade. And the number one thing I get asked is, well, how are you going to scale that? And it's which is a valid question. And we have right. We've we've successfully scaled the business to this point. And instead of, you know, deciding, OK, you know, we've gotten to here, but now it's time to finally, you know, take the big leap to full automation and a centralized plant. We are going to build out a second production hub with the model that we've created here in Atlantic Canada on the East Coast and replicate it with local farmers, local food producers and a social enterprise in central Canada that will service more customers in that market. So, you know, creating some redundancy, which is a good thing if you have a tight system and engaging more farmers and food producers and also reducing our climate footprint because you're not shipping ingredients and finished product criss crossing, you know, coast to coast, which is what we're currently doing.
[00:33:27] So that is something that we're working on right now. And we've identified a really amazing social enterprise partner in Toronto that is turning to our new partner. Yeah.
[00:33:36] And then really, I will be Vancouver after that, do you think?
[00:33:39] Yeah. Yeah. That's the plan.
[00:33:41] Nice. That's. Yeah, that's awesome. I love that idea. And I think you're completely right. You know, I think that it's and it is antithetical, but so is your entire company.
[00:33:52] And it's working out beautifully. You know, so I say stay the course. Thank you.
[00:33:57] Absolutely. Well, our time is running out and we're to one of my favorite pieces of the podcast, which is I get to describe to you, if you were at a safe, socially distanced place in a Gardiner Park tomorrow and a young woman or a female identified or non binary individual and anyone pretty much other than as cis gendered white man walked up to you and said, listen, Gina, I I've I've done my schooling.
[00:34:25] I've I've had kind of like this wonderful dream job. I was educating people and recycling environmental issues. But I mean I mean, I launched this great startup. I I'm not sure exactly where it's headed. I would take it to the farmer's markets. There's a good situation. I feel pretty confident in it. What are the top three pieces of advice you would give that individual knowing what you know now?
[00:34:47] So no one would be like mentorship and coaching is so credit has been critical to my journey. So I very early on was lucky enough to receive some funding that I could invest in. And a pretty high powered coach who is now one of my very close friend of mine. It doesn't have to be like that. It can be, you know, coffee with a mentor. But but finding mentorship is, I think, one of the most critical things because it can be really lonely. You know, entrepreneurship can feel very isolating and which is a crazy thing to say in this day and age where, of course, there's podcasts and Instagram and like more information than any of us really need.
[00:35:25] But it can still feel isolating. And I know I've been through it myself. So I would say mentorship is huge. What else? You know, if we're talking about a product, race based product, I would say like have a have a production plan in place for understanding how eventually you or you will hand off your production when it's time for you to, you know, work on your business instead of in your business.
[00:35:52] Doesn't have to be something that happens right away. And I actually suggest to any entrepreneurs and food that you yourself are very invested and very involved in manufacturing in the early days because then you intimately know your process and the costs associated with that and then how to create and invest in efficiencies. So that would be, you know, the succession plan out of your own. Manufacturing is one thing I would say is really critical. And, you know, just being unabashedly your own brand, you know, keeping your blinders on to an extent on what other people are doing and just double down on what makes you you and not being scared to use a voice in your brand that you haven't seen anywhere else because that will be your superpower.
[00:36:37] Yeah, absolutely. And it has been yours, at least, I think. And it really is. I want people to get on your website because I really like I think people will agree with me. I always think people will agree with me after I've explained myself.
[00:36:49] But I think in this case, they really well, when they hit your website and kind of get a feel for the video and understanding, you guys do a great deal about talking about the ethos of your company. OK. Back to the advice I have. Mentorship and coaching is crucial in the beginning. Number one. Number two, I have a production succession plan in place for the future handoff. But be very aware of the process as you begin it yourself. Number three, be unabashedly proud of your own brand and aware. I love than I am.
[00:37:21] I think those three are so crucial and they speak to think people really get lost sometimes in like these like, you know, make sure your funding's down, like all of these kind of crazy logistical things that for your story were possibly less crucial. And also, like you lose the the the beauty and, you know, and the three, the love nourishing community, your three on your Web site, you know, in that. And with that, you lose the taste and you lose the flavor and you lose all of those things along the way.
[00:37:52] And with your three with mentorship and production succession and really being unabashedly proud of your own brand and and siccing with it is crucial. I love the story. I think they're perfect. And they describe you. You emulate them perfectly. Shanna, we're out of time today.
[00:38:09] But I want to say thank you so much for meeting up with us and talking and walking us through made with local. I know you guys are really busy, and I do appreciate your time.
[00:38:17] Thanks. This has been so fun.
[00:38:19] Absolutely. And for everyone listening, we've been talking with Sheena Russell. She is the founder and CEO of Made with Local. You can find out more on her website that I have touted nonstop. It is w w w dot made with local. Dot. You can order stuff online at very least get on and check out the company's story. I frequently speak with a lot of companies I love, but I rarely meet with one that I can really get behind their ethos. And this is one of them. So I do appreciate it. And for everyone listening today, I appreciate you and your time.
[00:38:48] And until we speak again next time. Remember to stay safe, eat well and always bet on yourself. Slainte.
