How Dartmouth’s ‘Made With Local’ Scaled Without Sacrificing Its Values
HALIFAX – Sheena Russell may have stumbled into business almost by accident. But in the 10 years since she did, she’s proven you don’t have to sack your values to succeed.
Russell is the owner and co-founder of Made With Local, a Dartmouth company that makes simple, healthy snacks using ingredients from Canadian producers.
The company started with a small farmers market booth nearly a decade ago and has since grown to see its products in more than 1,000 retail locations across Canada.
And it did it all despite warnings of failure from seasoned veterans and a business model few thought would be viable at scale.
Building a customer base, bar by bar
Russell started the business with a partner, Kathy MacDonald, in 2012. Sick of snack foods stuffed with sugar and processed ingredients, they wanted to create something that was healthy and tasted good.
They sourced ingredients from local producers and eventually created Real Food Bars.
They sold the bars at local farmers’ markets, building up a loyal customer base, bar by bar. Then, in 2017, Sobeys stores started selling their products. From there, the business slowly expanded into other retail locations across the country.
But it’s only been in the last few years that things have really taken off for Made With Local.
In 2019, the company won the Producer of the Year award from Taste of Nova Scotia. In 2020, it took home the Halifax Chamber of Commerce’s Small Business of the Year Award.
More recently, Costco picked up the company’s line of granola bar mixes, prompting a major production expansion.
Russell says the surge of recognition has been both exciting and validating.
“It never ceases to thrill me,” she says. “Even just somebody recognizing the brand name is exciting. It just feels cool to build something that people recognize and hopefully enjoy bringing into their home.”
‘If this was really just all about the money I would have given up 100 times’
For Russell, the recognition is extra important because it validates a business model she’s constantly been forced to defend.
Since the very beginning, Russell has stubbornly stuck to her guns and insisted she could scale the business outside of the traditional mass-market production system.
Instead, Made With Local has long partnered with social enterprises to handle production.
It started in 2014 after she took time away from the business to have a baby. She needed someone to make the product for her, so she teamed up with The Flower Cart in New Minas.
The Flower Cart is a supported workplace program for people with barriers to the mainstream workforce.
Russell says that partnership changed everything for her.
She remembers the “aha moment” when realized she could create positive change in the world not just through her products, but through the choices she made about how to run the company.
She decided she would keep that philosophy at the core of the business, even if that meant real material impacts on the bottom line.
“I don’t know any other way to do business. I don’t know what the regular way to do things is, or what the script would be for other bar companies, I just know how I wanted to grow this company,” she says.
“It is way too freaking hard to imagine navigating through this without there being some deeper impact and connection to community. If this was really just all about the money I would have given up 100 times.”
Growing pains
But Russell’s philosophy did mean material impacts on the business.
Over the years, Made With Local’s expansion efforts have been hampered as Russell tried to scale while keeping her manufacturing grounded in a social enterprise model.
“Because of the nature of our manufacturing, we weren’t able to just, you know, pull a switch and quadruple our manufacturing overnight like some companies might be able to do. It was a very gradual process,” she says.
At one point, she tried partnering with a social enterprise organization in Halifax. She invested significant money and time in equipment and training only to find that the process wasn’t working.
Eventually, both sides agreed the deal wouldn’t’ work and Russell had to cut her losses.
She says she was often told by senior leaders in the business community that she would never be able to stick to her values and still grow the company big enough to be in places like Costco.
That kind of attitude sometimes led her to push back against her own company’s growth. But eventually, she realized she could, as she says, have her cake and eat it too.
‘A force to be reckoned with’
When Made With Local needed to scale to meet its obligations to Costco, Russell eventually found a partner in Ontario, with Out of the Box Packaging.
That partnership solidified for Russell that she could grow as large as she wanted, exactly the way she wanted.
“I am truly at the point in the company now where I know we can take it to as big a level as we ever want at this point because we have amazing partners in place and an amazing team. And now I know there isn’t a limit,” she says.
“I’m going to say this. I’m past all the old white dudes telling me that this is a nice little lifestyle business and you’ve taken it as far as you can. I’ve fully busted through that now, and we’re a force to be reckoned with.”
Trevor Nichols is a staff writer with Huddle in Halifax. Send him feedback at: [email protected].
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