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Ian Walker | Hippie Snacks
64 Plays4 months ago
Let’s continue our walk down the organic wild side. In this episode of Aisle 42 we talk with Ian Walker, affectionately known as the "organic godfather of Western Canada."
Ian is the visionary co-founder of Hippie Snacks and Left Coast Naturals, two brands that are known for quality, transparency, and sustainability in the food industry.
From his humble beginnings selling peanut butter at a local market to leading a movement toward clean, simple ingredient snacks, Ian shares his incredible journey and the inspirations that have fuelled his nearly 30-year career in organics.
To learn more go to: https://www.hippiesnacks.com/
To learn about who is behind this podcast go to: https://www.ethicalfoodgroup.com/podcast
Here’s a summary of this interview:
Introduction and Legend: Ian Walker is introduced as the "organic godfather of Western Canada," setting a high expectation for his expertise and influence in the organic food industry.
Perfect Grocery Store Vision: Walker imagines a future grocery store centered on transparency, where consumers can easily see the origins and contents of their food, and consistent regulations ensure clarity on health and environmental claims.
Transparency and Supply Chain: Both Walker and Hiebert agree on the importance of supply chain transparency, which would help consumers make more informed and confident choices about their food.
Hippie Snacks Popularity: A personal anecdote highlights the popularity of Hippie Snacks, specifically the banana bread crisps, showing the positive reception and enjoyment from consumers.
Journey to Organic Business: Walker shares his journey into the organic food industry, starting from a partnership with a friend and evolving through a passion for sustainability and nutrition.
Bulk Ingredients and Future of Bulk Buying: Discussion on the importance of bulk buying in grocery stores, emphasizing its alignment with consumer demands for transparency, less packaging, and reduced food waste.
Challenges of Organic Understanding: Walker notes the widespread misunderstanding of organic certification and the need for better storytelling to convey its comprehensive benefits beyond being pesticide-free.
Advocacy and Consumer Education: Walker emphasizes the need for concise storytelling about the benefits of organic foods and the efforts to educate consumers and store staff to improve understanding and support.
Hippie Snacks Products: An overview of the products made by Hippie Snacks, including crisps made from avocado, cauliflower, almonds, and bananas, as well as granolas and clusters. Walker’s current favourite is the apple cinnamon high-fiber granola.
Commitment to Quality and Flavour: Walker's commitment to not compromising on taste, even taking an extra year to perfect a vegan cheese almond crisp, highlights the brand's dedication to delivering delicious and high-quality products.
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Transcript
Introduction to Ian Walker and Isle 42
00:00:00
Speaker
This is Isle 42.
00:00:07
Speaker
Let's continue our walk down the organic wild side. In this episode of Isle 42, I talk with Ian Walker, affectionately known as the organic godfather of Western Canada. Well, at least that's what I call him.
From Peanut Butter to Sustainability Leadership
00:00:19
Speaker
Ian is the visionary co-founder of Hippie Snacks and left Coast Naturals, two brands that are known for quality, transparency, and sustainability in the food industry. From his humble beginning selling peanut butter at a local market to leading a movement towards clean, a simple ingredient snacks, Ian shares his incredible journey and the inspirations that have fueled his nearly 30-year career in organics.
00:00:42
Speaker
Oh, and we even get to talk about my favorite crackers, their banana bread crisps. So let's get into the future of food and snacking and the power of organic living.
Envisioning the Future of Grocery Shopping
00:00:51
Speaker
Here's Ian. Okay Ian, your legend precedes you, so I'm excited to see where these next 20 minutes are going to take us. The rumor is that you're the organic godfather of Western Canada, but before we go down that road, we'll jump right into the deep end with our idyllic kickoff question, and that is, if you were to imagine the perfect grocery store of the future, what would it look like? Oh, wow. That's a hard-hitting one.
00:01:18
Speaker
um To me, it would be all about transparency. So easy ability to see where the food came from, what is in it, what things to watch for. And there would be some consistency in the rules around, you know, people claim that it's healthy. There's one standard set of rules on what that really means. Or if they claim that it's good for the environment, then there's one standard set of rules. So I think the pieces of regulations around that would be set in place so that when they go to the store, consumers can completely know and have make easy choices.
00:01:56
Speaker
It might terrify some of them if they actually start to see where their garlic is coming from or where, you know, their red raspberries in their plastic clamshell that they've come, you know, from 3000 miles away. But yeah, that transparency, that supply chain transparency, it would be a beautiful thing to see more open and more honest. I just think people can make more um better informed choices. I agree. So I'm gonna leave the witness here a little bit and share with you a quick little story. My daughter and her friends raided my pantry the other day while I was upstairs working. And the ah the cacophony of sound that you know that was coming up the stairs it started as you know high-pitched banter and it turned into a chant and the chant was it tastes like banana bread it tastes like banana bread it tastes like banana bread and I think there was some dance routine involved.
00:02:46
Speaker
So I knew instantly what that meant is that they had found a pouch of hippie snacks, banana bread crisps. ah So that was always fun. But are you going to get them to record that for us? ah Yes. Maybe we should get a little recording and do a little jig for TikTok. Yeah, sounds good. I love it. So the ingredient deck on these hippie snacks is a beautiful thing. So simple, so clean. A lot of ingredient panels on the backs of these, you know, snack pouches and, you know, manufactured food, they can be pretty long, yours or not. And I know that when you look back on all of the things that you've done and all the way to this point, or you guys are one of the many things you're doing is manufacturing simple ingredient ah snacks.
00:03:31
Speaker
in a standing pouch that make people happy and make children chant food when you look back on the journey to get here. What is it that inspired
Ian's Accidental Food Industry Journey
00:03:40
Speaker
all of this? yeah Is it 30 years in the business of organics or 40? I mean, I don't, I don't think, yeah you know, I'm not quite that old, but yeah, that quite that old I'm so sorry. But where did this all start? It's 28, 28 years. But sorry, I'm cutting you off. What was your question? What's inspired or what's your question? Exactly. What was the inspiration for all this looking back 28 years, and looking to now? I mean i kinda fell into this i'm just really lucky you know i started this business when i was only twenty four and i really knew nothing about the food industry to to be frank i i just moved out west after university and
00:04:16
Speaker
was hanging out with a ah friend of my older brothers who was at Emily Carr doing graph design. He designed a food package as one of his final year-end projects for some peanut butter that he was making. And he said, oh, hey, I wonder if this could be a business. Could you help me out? and So we started making product and selling at Granville Island. And and so I literally just sort of sort of fell into this. I'd always had a fascination with food, but I came at this, both of us came at this from a sustainability perspective.
00:04:48
Speaker
I had worked as a canoe trip guide and I'm a big outdoors person so that environmental perspective always hit home for me. And Jason, the fellow that I started with, he's an Olympic athlete that that was vegan and that wasn't very common in the 80s, which is when he was competing. So he came at this from a nutritional perspective and an organic perspective. and So I just got lucky enough to be friends with this guy We started the business and I basically learned along the way and very quickly found out that It really was my calling because it's hit on all the areas that I love like it's it's a business with purpose and it aligns with my values and I can be an environmentalist and yet be an entrepreneur at the same time But I didn't know that coming into this. I kind of discovered that through doing it
00:05:36
Speaker
And advocacy through food, it's ah it's a bit of a journey and a bit of a zip folder when you start to get into the into the weeds. And I know that in your work in organics, you guys also in parallel to hippie snacks as ah as the the snack brand, you guys are also doing bulk ingredients in grocery stores. I see in grocery stores in my neighborhood, ah Left Coast you know bulk bins and I you know those infuriating like zip ties that you have to write numbers on or all that kind of thing but a Wonderful lineup of organic products. i Can I ask?
00:06:11
Speaker
How is that sort of part of the grocery store doing? I remember shopping the organic, you know, sort of the bulk bins when I was younger as my parents. And I kind of felt like they went away for a while and now I'm seeing them come back more. And I'm curious to get your take on the future of bulk buying in grocery stores.
The Rise of Bulk Buying and Its Benefits
00:06:29
Speaker
For sure, just just a bit of background, we we started as a manufacturer and then we got into distribution, delivering our own products and other people's products, but we were also buying ingredients and we realized that there was sort of an underserved market for a lot of those stores around bulk.
00:06:45
Speaker
And so we started using our buying power as a manufacturer to take those ingredients and start selling them to stores and create programs for them to help lift that up because it is kind of a bit of an afterthought area of the store, but it actually should be it actually is a really sexy piece of the store. it's It's an area of the store where they make really good money. And I think the future is bright for bulk because it aligns with everything that consumers are asking for. So they're asking for more transparency and direct purchasing. Well, basically we're buying from farmers and then it's going directly into the bins. You don't have a whole bunch of middlemen.
00:07:23
Speaker
you're asking you People want clean ingredient lists. It's just one ingredient. It's usually super simple. They want less packaging. Well, there you go. You can buy what you want. You want less food waste. You buy as much as you need. You don't have to buy too much and buy a really big bag. You can fill up the bag as much as you want. So it really fits on a lot of the kind of things that consumers are asking for. The tricky part has been making sure that the stores support it and that consumers are willing to put that little bit of extra work into kind of bagging their own products. And so we've been really working to try and make it easy for retailers so that they can promote it and that it can be a super interesting part of the store. Because we always think of it as like it's literally like dry produce.
00:08:08
Speaker
Yeah. You know, and I was filling up a bag the other day. I think it was, I'm going to say was oats and the lady beside me was, was getting some nuts and maybe it was pumpkin seeds. And, and she was, she sort of remarked at the price. She's like, Oh, Oh, these are more expensive than I thought. And I just sort of thought I'd take the moment and kind of just say, yeah, but they're really, really delicious. That's all I could say. That's all that came out. I'm no, I didn't prepare that statement. And she looked at me, she went, really? I'm like, yep. Sure. Okay. And and ah she she did stop, the the pouring stopped there for a second. She's like, okay. And she tied off her bag and wrote her little number on the on the zip tie and carried on. But you know the price tag of organic bulk, you know it is noticeably more than the non-organic products.
00:08:56
Speaker
But when consumers are faced with these choices, I wonder just how clear are they on the benefits of organic?
Demystifying Organic Benefits for Consumers
00:09:05
Speaker
Do they do they really get it? I mean, is sort of is it preaching to the choir? Or ah you know is there an opportunity for a consumer to see this? What is a premium priced ingredient and kind of go, oh, you know what? I'm going to make this switch. I'm going to try this even though it's going to cost me more. Well, it's funny. I think that's it's one of the, a bit of a bane of my existence is the lack of understanding on what organic is. And I mean, I've been living it for theyre almost 30 years. So I know it, but I'm constantly amazed how little people understand, like they do consumer testing and things like pesticide free.
00:09:44
Speaker
score way higher than organic natural scores way higher than organic whereas organic is pesticide free but also so much more it's regenerative it is it is welfare for animals like there is a lot of other aspects to organic and I've never understood that in that you have one certification that kind of ticks so many different boxes, and yet it's almost too much for people to handle. They just want to know, oh, is this chemical free or this is pesticide free? So sometimes it almost has too many things to claim. It's kind of like when you see front of pack of people have too many claims on the front, it all starts to blur.
00:10:21
Speaker
Sometimes I feel like organic is is like that. So I think we have to tell a much better story, a concise story about why organic is better, why it's better for you and why it's better for the planet. So we're starting to do that a lot more. like we we have We do training with ah staff at stores about why organic is better so that when consumers ask them, they can talk about it. we We do it at demos with consumers where we talk about it. We have QR codes so you can go in and learn a little bit more about the the farmer and what are some really cool things they're doing. ah be Even beyond organic, like our our walnut farmer, they they power their entire processing facility and all of the coolers.
00:11:01
Speaker
with the walnut shells. They they burn the walnut shells and and create power. So they do a lot of these really cool, like our almond processor, they they compost all of their almond shells and that's what provides a lot of the nutrients for the soil. like There's a lot of kind of full cycle activities going on here that really, ah when people hear about it, then they get really excited about it. But you have to be really good storytellers and communicators on these things. But those things tap into shared values. And when shopping, a lot of consumers are simply looking at the, what's in it for me? Is it going to feed my family? Is it going to taste good? You know, is it, they sort of, their checklist is is a lot shorter. And, in you know, in the business we talk about, you know, the consideration set or sort of the consumer preferences. When I look at things like non-GMO,
00:11:51
Speaker
Consumers seem to sort of understand that one a little bit easier because they you know, maybe they do maybe they don't but it's not as convoluted It's almost single focus and and they sort of feel like okay. Well genetically modified Ingredients sounds scary. It sounds too laboratory. I want my food product to not be that processed or engineered so they you know, they look for non-gmo and you kinda said it you know with your organic certification given it is such a zip folder is when that gets unpacked it gets overwhelmed so it' be interesting to see where the consumer mindset goes over the next few years as organic and regenerative search to come into the conversation along with organic more.
00:12:35
Speaker
It'll be really interesting to see how consumers change their ah preferences for sure. We talk about this a lot with like food products that we make. you know Maybe there's consumers looking for, say, two attributes, and they're willing to pay for those two attributes. But maybe you have five attributes for your product, but you're giving them three attributes that they're not willing to pay for. If they're only willing to pay for two and you give them five, then you're costing way more because of those other three attributes. And sometimes maybe organic falls into that. It's got all of these pieces, but people just want to be able to say, okay, it's chemical free or it's non-GMO. So like I said, I think that there is a really good a simplified story that we can tell about organic and we we need to be better about it and way more concise.
00:13:22
Speaker
I'm on the Canadian Organic Trade Association board and this is something we talk about fairly frequently on how we can tell the story better and how these other aspects while new and more topical have always been part of organic so they're they're kind of doing what we've done but getting more credit for it, which is frustrating of course. Yeah, I get that. Let's take a step back and go to hippie snacks and just highlight if you would, for listeners, what do you make at hippie snacks and what are
Hippie Snacks and Ian's Favorite Product
00:13:50
Speaker
some of the flavors? And most importantly, Ian, what's your favorite hippie snack?
00:13:55
Speaker
So we we manufacture ah real food snacks. So snacks made from real food. So we have a line of crisps that are made from either avocado or cauliflower or almonds. And then we have some sweet ones made out of bananas, which tastes like banana bread, as you alluded to earlier. And then we also have granolas and clusters. So we do a grain free granola and a high fiber granola, as well as we do a nut and seed cluster, that type of product. My favorite right now is probably you know, it's usually the newer one.
00:14:32
Speaker
My favorite probably right now is we do an apple cinnamon high fiber granola. That's the one I'm eating the most lately. I love that one. I do love our, we do a vegan cheese um almond crisp. And we actually took an extra year to launch that product because I'm a big cheese eater. So I'm not vegan myself, but we have made our our products plant Plant-based and we weren't happy with that until we were happy with the cheese tastes. We weren't gonna launch it So we took an extra year to be able to do that. So I actually really liked the taste of that one I love it. I can't wait. Yeah, that would be I feel like
00:15:11
Speaker
vegan cheese applications they're getting a lot more creative these days they used to be sort of like you know in a tub or is it was very simplistic and now it's becoming an ingredient deck sort' becoming an ingredient that people get really creative with so that's really really fun. Well, and I don't think you can, you you know, one of our things is you can't compromise on taste. At the end of the day, people are going to try something, but they won't eat it continually like a a daily weekly use type item if if it doesn't taste great. And so it all comes down to tasting really good. And so, you know, we like to say real food tastes better. So if we make it out of cauliflower, you can taste cauliflower. If we make it out of almonds, you can taste the almonds and you kind of want to have that nice flavor that's approachable.
00:15:58
Speaker
Yes certainly and when it comes to whole foods when i roast cauliflower my daughter will eat it if i do anything else to cauliflower she won't eat it so there's a certain ways to to treat whole foods in ways that you know our families will enjoy. yeah Yeah a little better than ah boiling it for half an hour like grandma used to do. Yeah, or do you remember the microwave Tupperware sort of clam shell and ah oh, it's just radioactive vegetables. It was usually was asparagus that was just pulverized like radioactive hot. And it was just it was just basically stringy. Oh, I just the smell I can I can actually smell it right now. My mom used to do she would do zucchini and then she would grate cheese and put it on top of it and and throw it all in the microwave.
00:16:47
Speaker
Because if there was cheese on it, we would eat it. But that bothers me thinking about that. I remember when my mom got her first microwave, she went to a microwave cooking class at some like future shop or some you know digital you know electronic store. They had a microwave cooking class. She came home with her cookbook and everything was going in the microwave. I actually didn't know what eggs tasted like for a number of years because it was always microwaved eggs. It was like, oh, oh, those are a nightmarish type opportunity. Now we live in the air fryer age. Yeah, I'm not there. I didn't buy an air fryer. I haven't air fried. Everyone talks about air frying, but I haven't, I haven't done. Are you an air fryer? Uh, yeah, it's just, uh, quick and easy. It's nice.
00:17:36
Speaker
I have an Instapot, but I only use it for slow cooking. I haven't done any of the high pressure cooking yet. So I guess I'm old school. I don't
Closing Remarks and Future Episode Preview
00:17:44
Speaker
know. Yeah. Well, I love this quick chat and I just love your product and most importantly, the philosophy that you guys live and breathe over at Left Coast and Hippie Snacks. Just thank you to you and your team for all that you're doing, Ian, and appreciate the creativity and the wonderful flavors you guys make. Well, thank you so much for having me on and and thanks for telling lots of great stories and saw you post about a whole bunch of great female entrepreneurs that you've interviewed over the last while. And so thanks for getting all those stories out there. Appreciate that, Ian. Thanks so much.
00:18:19
Speaker
Thanks for listening to this episode of IL-42. If you want to learn more about everything that Ian and his team are making, go to hippiesnacks.com. Okay, there's just five episodes left in season one of IL-42, and then we'll be taking a short break while we prepare for upcoming. season two which is going to include an expanded lineup of episodes that are going to be really, really fun and totally different. But that's all I'm going to say for now. That's it for me. I'm Corwin Hebert from Ethical Food Group, and I'll see you in the future.