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Tatiana Bossy | Le Grand
104 Plays5 months ago
I followed the trail of my favourite pesto and plant-based cheese sauce and it led me all the way to Quebec, and Le Grand and co-founder Tatiana Bossy.
In this episode of Aisle 42 Tatiana shares her journey through the business world of the once trendy now mainstream plant-based movement. We talk about her approach to wholesome ingredients and their efforts to source products from suppliers who give a damn about people and the planet. Tatiana also envisions a future where dairy-free and high-quality products truly make consumers' lives easier - which is something we can all appreciate.
We also talk about their bold expansion into Western Canada and we even give a shout out vegan celebrities Pamela Anderson and Bryan Adams.
To learn more about these products and where to find them go to https://lovelegrand.com.
To learn more about who’s behind this podcast go to: https://www.ethicalfoodgroup.com/podcast
Here’s a quick summary of this interview:
Global Phenomenon: Tatiana Bossy discusses how the plant-based movement has transformed from a fringe trend to a global phenomenon.
Focus on Health and Wellbeing: Emphasis on improving health, wellbeing, and energy through plant-based nutrition.
Sustainability Efforts: Le Grand focuses on sustainability by using real plant-based ingredients and sourcing from conscientious suppliers.
Local and International Sourcing: They aim to buy more from Canadian suppliers but also source sun-dried tomatoes from Turkey due to climate constraints.
Celebrity Endorsements: Tatiana shares a story about Pamela Anderson and Bryan Adams, both committed vegans, trying Le Grand's products.
Missed Endorsement Opportunity: Pamela Anderson tried Le Grand's products but didn't publicly endorse them, which Tatiana found unfortunate.
Product Availability: Le Grand's mac and cheese sauce is now available at Whole Foods and will be promoted throughout the summer.
Negotiations with Save-On-Foods: Tatiana is negotiating with Save-On-Foods to bring their mac and cheese sauce to stores in the fall.
Independent Grocers: The mac and cheese sauce will also be available at various independent grocers across the West.
Positive Reception: Corwin Hiebert praises Le Grand's products, expressing gratitude for their quality and the passion behind their creation.
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Transcript
Tatiana's Journey into Plant-Based Movement
00:00:00
Speaker
This is aisle 42.
00:00:07
Speaker
I followed the trail of my favorite pesto and plant-based cheese sauce and it led me all the way to Quebec and Legrand and co-founder Tatiana Vasi. In this episode of IL-42, Tatiana shares her journey to the business world of the once trendy, now mainstream plant-based movement.
Sourcing and Ingredient Responsibility
00:00:23
Speaker
We talk about her approach to wholesome ingredients and their efforts to source products from suppliers who give a damn about people and the planet. Tatiana also envisions a future where dairy-free and high-quality products truly make consumers' lives easier. which is something we can all appreciate
00:00:39
Speaker
We also talk about their bold expansion into Western Canadian grocery stores, and we give a shout out to vegan celebrities Pamela Anderson and Brian Adams. Let's get into it. Here's Tatiana from Legrand.
Future of Grocery Shopping and Organic Awareness
00:00:54
Speaker
Tatiana, I'm so thrilled that we're finally able to connect. This is the first conversation you and I have had away from the chaos of a trade show floor. which is so great. Now on aisle 42, we like to jump right in. So I'm going to officially welcome you to the podcast with a question and it's about the future. If you were to imagine the perfect grocery store of the future, what would it look like? Oh dear, that feels like a very loaded question. Well, first of all, Corbin, thank you so much for having me because my favorite topic is food and health. So very excited to jump right in. My favorite, favorite grocery store is loaded with fruit and vegetables. I just really, really hope that somehow the government will stop subsidizing all the junk
00:01:44
Speaker
and just make it much more centered on on you know what really nourishes and feeds the body and the soul. So fruit and vegetables and definitely just with a focus obviously on a consciousness around can we just like create more awareness around GMOs and ah the importance of organic when when we can. I agree. I think it's well said. And the last time I was at a grocery store a few days ago, I decided to slow my role a little bit and you know entered through the appropriate door, which put me right into the produce section. And I decided to, instead of blasting through to grab my favorites or my usuals, I decided to look a little bit deeper into the things that I don't normally buy. you know Some of those
00:02:36
Speaker
vegetables that look a little weird or that come from places unfamiliar to me and I started looking them up like what is this thing what is this gonna taste like and I started I'm not gonna I shouldn't confess this I even started smelling a few things I'm sure people aren't excited about you know who's that guy smelling all that stuff My husband, all the time during COVID, you weren't even supposed to touch them. You would just give others a dirty look right back. I know. I remember my dad i was joking about like rolling cantaloupes down the aisle to see if it curves a little bit, to see if it's a good one. So maybe I didn't go quite that far. But but I agree. I think a grocery store full of fruits and vegetables, ones that are you know well-growing, that are organic,
Creative Process and Production Techniques
00:03:17
Speaker
ideally.
00:03:17
Speaker
and that can fill our fridges and fill our tummies with ah good nutrition that's ah as raw formed as possible as a beautiful future. So I appreciate you sharing that. I wanted to be the head chef of Chuck E. Cheese when I was 10 years old. So my aspirations changed a lot over the years, but I always have loved being in the kitchen. My happy place is that's this my that's my playground. I love being in the kitchen. I know you and your partner in crime, Bernard, have a real passion for food and for inspired cooking. What is it about the creative process that brings your food brand to life?
00:03:52
Speaker
ah Well, my husband and I husband and partner he is the one actually who's created all of our products and so he was a um He's definitely a creative. He's an original as I like to call him on a good day. He thinks outside the box and so most of food products are developed by food scientists and he brings a whole different perspective so he's a um yeah Rock and jazz drummer who grew up eating if not vegetarian even Macrobiotic back in the 70s. So a whole other awareness around That it starts with food food is is the basis for you know, true health and so we started our business very much focused on how do we
00:04:47
Speaker
make food with a good enough shelf, fresh food, but with a good enough shelf life that we can get it out to stores without loading it with preservatives. And so we built our plant, ah no pun intended, really based on enlarging it to a scale that is adapted to still having quality foods. When you go into plants that are so massive, the equipment that is so massive, of course, they have to add gums and fillers and I just call it, you know, the gunk to be able to get the product, I guess, ultimately into the container and ah in the store.
00:05:35
Speaker
And so, you know, our machines are midsize. We have a lot of thousand kilo kettles. ah So it's still, ah you know, very, very sizable. But it's kind of a perfect size to be able to um make products that will, you know, feed, but on a large enough scale that it it's it's makes sense from a business perspective, but that still tastes like you made it yourself.
00:06:07
Speaker
It sounds beautiful and you know making a lot of food for a lot of people, as you do, isn't always easily done. But as innovation comes into play, it can sure make that process a lot smoother, a lot safer in a lot of ways. and And you guys are really putting out
Innovations in Plant-Based Products
00:06:22
Speaker
some remarkable things. So why don't we take a moment here, why don't you share with IL-42 listeners The products that you make, what are you guys making? The one thing that you're making most recently that's new is your your cheese sauce. And I'll let you ahll let you divulge more of the details on that, but it is the best cheese sauce, plant-based cheese sauce I have ever had. And I eagerly await its dramatic arrival here out west. Maybe it is in certain places and spaces. I'm still struggling to find it. If you don't mind me saying it out loud, but I have tasted it and it is something I can't wait to serve my family. but
00:06:57
Speaker
Why don't you just walk us through the the products that you guys are making? Well, there's a lot of shelf stable products out there and there are a lot of frozen products. The hardest to do is fresh because shelf stable, you've got a ton of shelf life. Frozen, you've got a ton of shelf life. But fresh, you're going up against the aging of the product. And so how do you get it to consumers fast enough? so that it's going to taste um just as good as when it was made. So we really developed, I guess, in the end, it became a passion, but how do you you know naturally get shelf life? And so this is a preoccupation for a manufacturer in our space.
00:07:44
Speaker
And so we created a very long time ago already, a number of pesto sauces. So it's made with fresh, they're they are made with fresh basil. We still even squeeze the lemon juice fresh every week. The basil comes in fresh from Mexico every week. The Romano cheese, we have one product that that's a you know a real traditional dairy. We consider it our legacy product because it's been on the market since, ah I guess the 90s, yeah. And it sells really well. So it's like, well, what the heck? But even then, Bernard, my partner, used Romano cheese so that it's sheep's milk, which is more digestible. So we've always had this consciousness around dairy. So number one, we've always focused on fresh and creating fresh products with only real food, real ingredients.
00:08:37
Speaker
So you'll never see you know all the the fake stuff in our products. So you could make your own pesto or you could just buy ours because it's made ah fresh every single week of the year, except between Christmas and New Year's so everyone can have some time off. and then we um Just have been exploring for the last four or five years a lot of different products in the dairy-free area so, you know, we launched our our vegan butters and we called them vegan and a lot of people have this association that you know, Vegan isn't going to taste so good. I personally don't Eat any meat. I don't usually dairy sometimes, you know if it's really good milk chocolate I can't resist. ah But so I have to say that I've just become more and more disgruntled with the movement in these last years, just feeling it's been co-opted by large corporations and the the quality isn't necessarily there.
Trends and Challenges in Vegan Movement
00:09:37
Speaker
So we um
00:09:39
Speaker
are kind of moving away from calling them vegan products because what's been fascinating for us to learn is that somewhere close, I don't think exactly, but close to 50% of the adult population is dairy free or just lactose intolerant or not digesting dairy, having discomfort. So more and more people wouldn't consider themselves at all vegan, but then they're just opting for either dairy free or less dairy in their lives and I believe that's how we connected because you were curious you know about our our mac and cheese sauce and our mac and cheese sauce is incredible and this is where we wanted to think outside the box and not use you know just powders and such so it's actually a ah proprietary fermentation process that we've created and we it's cashew based
00:10:36
Speaker
but with carrots and potatoes. So it's super fun but you just pour it on to anything and everything. I have a fondness for potatoes and broccoli and as I said you know ah dream grocery store is with all the veggies. So but sometimes you just want a little treat right besides just you know a bit of salt and pepper or so or butter our vegan butter. But anyway, just the cheese sauce is so much fun. So we've been exploring a lot of that and um believe that there's a whole um consumer base that is um wanting those better for you comfort foods. But who wants to sacrifice taste and and pleasure, right? so Yeah, our family, and you you and I have talked about it before. My family is dairy-free-ish.
00:11:26
Speaker
So when we cheat, when we consume something that has dairy in it, it's considered like it's not just flippant. It's like, how are we going to feel about this? How well is this ingredient? Is it made? It's not just a you know a casual thing. we We do pay attention
Benefits of Plant-Powered Diets
00:11:42
Speaker
ah to those things. So there's very little dairy in our house. And when I think about The well, the movement that you're a part of, and and I think it is one where maybe it isn't outright vegan, but it's certainly more considered around you know what people are consuming. I think the and you guys use this term powered by plants. I think that diets that are powered by plants
00:12:05
Speaker
really can bring some remarkable value to on the nutritional level, on the energy level, on even on the calorie level. a lot can be A lot of good things can be done when we lean into our plants, our fruits, and our vegetables. And if you don't mind my asking, with your family specifically, was it did it come more from the you, the the parents, or more the kids just as young children just having an intolerance to dairy? Yeah, it came from my daughter when she was a newborn and my wife was feeding her. The first year was just a really tricky year for ah a new mom and and a feeding mom. And so when my wife removed dairy from her diet, both her and baby thrived um almost um within a week. um It was dramatic.
00:12:55
Speaker
And um so those good signs sort of led us to believe, Hey, I wonder we should be doing this differently. I was a little bit of a late comer. I was a little bit like, Oh no, you guys do the vegan thing. I'm going to keep doing my, you know, my cheesy, you know, milk and dairy and ice cream thing. But eventually ah they they won me over. ah for a bunch of reasons. Part of that was, you know, ingredients getting better and products getting better tasting ah was a big part of it. But also too, I started to become more aware of how I felt when I was or wasn't ah consuming dairy. So bit a bit of a journey for us. Nothing, you know, the doctor didn't say anything. There was no dramatic test or, you know, result. It was just like,
00:13:32
Speaker
We feel better when, and so that's really driven our consumption of of dairy. So you talked about cheese, you know, there are certain kinds of, you know, finer cheeses that, well, we will definitely cheat on those, but the you know more processed cheeses or sort of things that, you know, are more commercial and in production, we wouldn't touch them. We just know, well, those are going to make us feel like garbage. So we wouldn't even, it doesn't even feel like an indulgence because we know it's going to just make us feel like crap. And i I feel like there's a real, I certainly don't want to call it a trend, but my sense of where consumers are exploring right now is, well, give me real food and I will um take care of myself better. So the desire to be educated, maybe a little bit more, I get the sense that there is that opening. And so a cheese ah that may be sheep's milk or
00:14:31
Speaker
goat's milk for some people that is a little easier to digest. And so yeah, I think it's um just a ah curiosity that I'm really appreciating right now from when I have a chance to talk to ah to our consumers. And let's talk about organic for a moment. You guys are very clear on your use of organic ingredients What's that process like when you guys are making decisions around how to make these product formulations or which suppliers to work with? And organic certification is not easily done. it's ah It is a labor of love for a lot of brands that make it a priority. So ah what's it like for your team to really lean into the organic side of things?
Sourcing Challenges and Sustainability Focus
00:15:15
Speaker
Well, it's ah I would combine organic and the non-GMO because they're both two separate certifications and they are ah complex. I was making a face a moment ago because it's tough and that's why I think just there's not more out there. It's kind of sad, the whole you know reality of the the inflation that we're living because it just made even more and more um ingredients, um less accessible or or you know finished products. But we struggle for sure because it's crazy. Like here in Canada, there's nobody doing prepared organic carrots and potatoes. So we literally bring them in. yeah the One of the more common ingredients
00:16:07
Speaker
carrots and potatoes, we have to bring them in from the states and before that we brought them in from Europe. to be able to have the organic. Because we're a manufacturer, we're not at home. So just it's not a matter of just buying a couple of carrots and peeling them and and you know the potatoes. So we buy them what's called IQF. So they are already prepared and and frozen and chopped. So for us, we need to be able to find a supplier and there aren't any doing them doing the organic.
00:16:42
Speaker
in Canada so this is where then one asks oneself do I continue in this direction or do I just buy the conventional but we Bernard and I believe in this and believe that it's um really important if we can um at least to offer some ingredients. Not all of our products will be fully organic. The mac and cheese is not certified organic, but it has organic cashews, organic carrots, organic potatoes. ah So you know some ingredients are just really, really harder to come by. So you just have to make choices.
00:17:23
Speaker
And it's such a, I'm shocked to hear that many of those ingredients you're not able to have from a Canadian processor or grower. that's ah That is interesting and a little bit sad. I guess it comes down to the volume along those lines. That is true. So I know it really does require a commitment because when you talk to a lot of manufacturers, a lot of brands, companies, everyone got the memo about, you know, it's important to have a purpose, a mission. It can't just be about making money.
00:17:58
Speaker
But it's still tough with all the say the the pressure on on manufacturers that sometimes you know we we question, okay, well, can we do it? so well who keep this commitment alive because it is costly. So we will get a few different um prices for the conventional and and then um I think that's where Bernard is really a wizard at trying to play with the product and see where he can make it work by still having some of the key organic ingredients.
00:18:37
Speaker
So let's talk about sustainability for a moment. What are some of the initiatives that you guys have at Legrand around sustainability and what would you love to see happen in the future? So I think for the longest time it felt that the plant-based movement was more of a fringe movement, but it's just it's absolutely become a global phenomenon and Everyone is, well, not everyone, but almost everyone is looking to, you know, how they can make improvements to their health, their well-being, and how they find more energy and and feel good. So this is where we um are really looking forward to bringing in more of our products that are dairy-free.
00:19:26
Speaker
and expanding on quality products to be able to just make a consumers our consumers make people's lives easier. So when you ask the question of sustainability, I get it. I mean, we're all kind of concerned for the environment and what have you, but we use real plant-based ingredients. So that is our most important focus and um of course if we can buy more from suppliers in Canada if we can work with a lot more conscientious suppliers and getting to know them even like our sun-dried tomatoes we bring them in from Turkey because they just can't come from here there's not enough sunshine and we work with the farm in Turkey and we bring them in once a year so
00:20:20
Speaker
really just trying to be as close as we can to our ingredients. And here's a fun one for you. If there was to be a celebrity out there in the world that would spontaneously endorse one of your products, which celebrity would that be? Hmm. So I think it was like four, five years ago, Pamela Anderson had, uh, through so a friend or someone, I don't know quite, but, uh, we, asked and we sent her some products. And because, oh, that's right. No, it's coming back to me. Brian Adams and her are friends because they're both very committed ah vegans. And so he said, well, send her some samples too. And so we did. And it was, that well, but she didn't ever talk about them, which was kind of too bad. I'd love for her to talk about maybe, yeah
00:21:19
Speaker
if ever she uses any of our amazing mac and cheese sauce, because it's probably been a very, very long time she hasn't ever had a yummy mac and cheese dinner. Oh my gosh, yeah. Pamela Anderson, she's out here on the West Coast. Brian Adams. Those are some good names to drop, by the way. I like that. so That's a solid play. Yeah. Well, Brian Adams, too, did once recommend our pesto sauce and it was fantastic because a lot of people did um on his Instagram recognize it and such.
00:21:52
Speaker
But hey, Corbin, I have um a a goal for you now because you were saying, you know, being able to find our new mac and
Legrand's Expansion and Celebrity Endorsements
00:22:00
Speaker
cheese sauce. So I am negotiating right now with Save On and Out West. So I'm hoping that they're going to bring it in for the fall. So please, if ever you go shopping there, ask for it. But Whole Foods has just um this ah just very recently did is promoting our mac and cheese sauce. They just got it on the shelf. They're going to be having promotions throughout the summer. And so will a number of the wonderful um independent grocers across the West.
00:22:33
Speaker
That's the best news I've heard in a long time. So that's great. I haven't been to a Whole Foods recently. I walked by one en route to my office, but it's not too close to home, but Save-On is everywhere. I think there's a Save-On within 10 kilometres of every house in this province, if not the entire Western Canada. But it's great to hear that your products are coming out this way. I've seen your pestos before out here, actually. I've had them a few times now over the last two years. So I usually make my own, but I love having a pouch of yours in the fridge. And it's you know just so grateful for all that you make and the beautiful food that you and your husband and team make and your passion for plants is ah is a wonderful thing. So thank you so much. Well, thank you, Corbin. Thank you so much for having me.
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:23:19
Speaker
Take care.
00:23:21
Speaker
Thanks for listening to this episode of IL-42. I hope you enjoyed hearing everything that Tatiana and her team are up to. To learn more about their products and where to find them, go to lovelagram.com. Okay, that's it for me. I'm Corbin Hebert from Ethical Food Group, and I'll see you in the future.