Seasoning Your Brand of Food or Wine

What do you get when you combine a love of words with a love of food or wine? A visual essay of brands and the stories they tell about their products.



Penny McKinlay, Communications Consultant

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Camino: Fair Trade, Organic Chocolate and Sweets

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In 1999, three young Ottawa entrepreneurs decided to set up a new business. They had worked overseas and were concerned about the ways in which conventional businesses exploited farmers in many countries around the world. They wanted to provide Canadian consumers with an organic, fairly traded alternative. Because they had chosen to work with producer co-operatives, they established themselves as a worker co-operative, and La Siembra Co-operative was born with the launch of Canada’s first Fair Trade, organic hot chocolate – Cocoa Camino . Getting Started La Siembra’s first year in business was pretty crazy. They were able to source cocoa and sugar for the hot chocolate from two co-operatives in Costa Rica, so they had the raw ingredients. They also had a market as right from the start they were able to supply natural health stores via distributors. But the hot chocolate was being packed in a church basement by volunteers, and they used bicycles to deliver the product to Canada...
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A Place Within: Rediscovering India by M.G. Vassanji

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