Wabanaki Maple Set To Double Sales For Third Year In A Row
TOBIQUE FIRST NATION–Wabanaki Maple rallied where other businesses faltered in the pandemic, doubling sales in its first and second years of operation. Now, the business is on track to double sales again this year.
Business development lead Peter Davis said a strong pivot to a digital presence not only saved the business, but helped it grow.
Wabanaki recently clinched the Opportunities NB Resilience Award, in the 2022 Export Awards – a testament to its decisive move in 2020, shortly after its founding.
“We’ve basically been around since the pandemic started; our first full year of sales was actually 2022,” Davis said.
Davis said that he, Wabanaki’s first employee, and owner-founder Jolene Laskey, faced the need to change plans quickly to adapt to the needs created by the pandemic, in the winter of 2020.
“Obviously, when everything shut down we had to revitalize and pivot our strategy on how we were going to move forward.”
The original plan was to sell in a bunch of tourism shops after attending markets and shows in person in 2019.
“We had to completely flip that strategy once there was no tourism going on and we couldn’t do any in-person events,” Davis said.
That flip meant a move to a stronger online presence.
Since then, Wabanaki has brought on four full-time staff members: a full-time marketing person, and salesperson, and two more staff working at its newly expanded facility.
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Wabanaki also has finished the construction of a new, 4,800-square-foot facility that replaced its old, 650-square-foot berth last month.
Davis said the expansion was carried out with the primary goal of upgrading Wabanaki’s capacity to age its signature maple syrup. Where it could only age 10 at a time before, it can now has room to age 100 barrels.
“That was one of our bigger bottlenecks. We had too much demand but not enough room to age the product all at once. We are able to offer more products all at once and have more inventory in house,” said Davis.
This expansion also includes a new shipping and receiving office, warehouse, processing facility, bottling and packaging operations.
Wabanaki specializes in flavoured maple syrup blends – such as Bourbon whiskey, oak-flavour, and rum – aged in barrels.
Davis noted the syrup maker is coming out with a new blend but was mum on details, noting, “we’re trying to finalize packaging for it, and it should be out later this summer.”
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Since the last time Huddle spoke with the company, Wabanaki has expanded to have a retail presence in every province and Canada and has signed major corporate partnerships with Bell Canada, Hockey Canada, and the Canadian Olympic Committee.
The Resilience Award from Opportunities NB was not the first recognition the maple syrup company received; Wabanaki was also a finalist in last year’s Powwow Pitch Competition.
In addition to its accolades and expansion, Wabanaki has launched its Bareroots Revive Box initiative – whereby it purchases artisanal products from other Indigenous-owned businesses to assemble a gift box that includes wellness products and food.
The proceeds from this support community initiatives like a recent effort to plant silver maples along the Nashwaak River, restoring forest land – a collaboration with the Nashwaak Watershed and Community Forest International.
Davis said they are about to launch a third edition of its Bareroots Box, and hope to be able to export the product into the U.S.
“We’re crossing our ‘T’s and Dotting our ‘I’s to make sure we’re compliant with regulations and are excited to expand into a new market.”
Sam Macdonald is a Huddle reporter in Moncton. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].