Made With Local Quadruples Production, Enters Costco
HALIFAX — When Sheena Russell co-founded Made with Local a decade ago, many naysayers said her business model wouldn’t work.
But she worked relentlessly to build her brand at Halifax farmers markets while sticking to her values. She teamed with social enterprises to produce her healthy snack bars while sourcing local, natural ingredients.
Now, Made with local’s validation has been proven through sales and the company’s rapid growth this fall. A year ago, the company was producing 50,000 bars a month. In October of 2022, that number was 250,000.
RELATED: How Dartmouth’s ‘Made With Local’ Scaled Without Sacrificing Its Values
To meet this growing demand, Russell just opened a new production centre in Windsor, Nova Scotia. Made with Local also uses a social enterprise in Toronto to make their bars.
“We’re quadrupling local manufacturing here in a small town in Nova Scotia,” said Russell. “It’s a big deal. And somedays are hard; I’m not going to pretend like it’s all sunshine and rainbows. But yeah, it feels good.”
“We have a world-class facility in the heart of historic downtown Windsor. It’s been really exciting and we’ve been working our butts off to get it up to scale. Right now, we’ve got a team of nine working on site making between 6,000 and 8,000 bars a day.”
Then, with a heartfelt laugh, Russell added: “That’s honestly still not enough. We’re so behind on orders.”
The Windsor facility, which used to be Yum Bakery (the same place where Russell used to source peanut butter), opened in October, which happened to be a historic 31 days for Made with local.
That same month, the healthy snack bars from Nova Scotia were shipped to 900 Shoppers Drug Mart across Canada. October also marked the company’s entry into all six Costco locations in Atlantic Canada. It’s been a month of milestones, to say the least.
“If I had the choice I would not have it all pile up, but that’s how things happened for us. Everything all lined up and, in a perfect world, I would have probably tried to space it out a bit more. But you strike when the iron is hot.”
It’s the type of business success that was once unimaginable for Russell. She once went on record that she wouldn’t sell her products in major grocery chains.
“I was at a meeting and I remember saying ‘over my dead body, are we going into Sobeys, that’s such a sellout thing to do,’” recalled Russell. “At that time we were a farmers market table and I am an extremely purpose and impact-driven entrepreneur.”
“I misunderstood the opportunity and the potential of scaling an impact-driven business by going into a big retailer. I think it’s silly now when I look back on it. Now, I realize when you build a business with impacts baked in, the bigger we get, the more impact we have. So why stifle the growth for ego?”
What is driving this company’s rapid ascent? People have responded to Made with Local’s snack bars and they have more market visibility than ever before. Online sales have increased and Made with Local recently launched some new flavours that are selling well.
“We’ve launched a few new flavors in the last year,” said Russell. “One of them, in particular, being our lemon square and we’re still not caught up on the amount of orders that just constantly come in for lemon squares.”
Derek Montague is a Huddle reporter in Halifax. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].