Food producers react to changing times

Mar 25, 2020

Mike Mckenzie of Seed to Sausage saw his sales tumble, overnight, when the restaurant business collapsed two weeks ago, and was subsequently closed entirely. After laying off his hourly employees, he was trying to figure how to find enough work to keep his four salaried employees on the job.

He also participated in a meat processing industry meeting where he was informed by officials from OMAFRA (Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food and Rural Affairs) that meat processing plants must remain operation and ready to produce in case there is an urgent need

“We have access to meat at good prices and we have a supply of our dried sausage as well, so we are opening up the store to sell fresh meat at a good price, and we are starting to do take-out meals as well this week,” he said. “We were busy last weekend with it.”

These are both things that the company was hoping to bring in this summer, but they have come to the forefront now that so much of the business has slowed down.

In addition, Seed to Sausage has approached local food banks and the Ontario Association of Food Banks about providing them with low cost cuts of meat, burgers and sausage, which the company has been doing for some time for the North Frontenac Food Bank.

“We are getting that set up this week. The goal is to help the community out with cheap, high quality meat and meals and keep my salaried staff employed,” Mckenzie said.

Delivery is also something they are working on.

Back Forty Cheese

Jeff and Jenna Fenwick also sell about 80% of the cheese Jeff makes to restaurants across Ontario, and those sales evaporated two weeks ago. While some of their sheep’s milk cheese can keep for a time, some of their softer cheeses have a short shelf life.

They put out a Facebook post offering their cheese to consumers in Eastern Ontario for pickup or delivery and in just a couple of days they managed to sell their inventory.

“We are overwhelmed by the support and are working on getting the logistics of the sales and delivery worked out,” said Jeff from the cheese shop on Tuesday (March 24)

Now he has a decision to make. He can curtail his production or keep producing and hope the sales will continue to roll in. The decision is complicated by the fact that Back Forty regularly purchases most, if not all, of the milk from five small sheep farms in the region, a relationship that Fenwick has been cultivating over several years in order to make sure he has a consistent supply of milk for his cheese factory.

“I don’t want them to have to dump all that milk, especially in the spring when there is so much of it, but it is a risk for me to keep making so much cheese,” he said.

To make things easier, through a mutual friend a web developer has stepped forward to create a fully functioning web-based store for Back Forty Cheese, which is coming online this week.

“Jenna has spent all week getting the orders we got from our web call organised, and this will make that so much easier to manage,” he said, “and he gave me a very good price on it, and then said he would do it for cheese, which is even better.”

Back Forty Cheese is available at Foodsmiths, Seed to Sausage, Local Family Farms, and Glenburnie Groceries, at the farm gate on Gulley Road in Mississippi Station, and as of this week at www.artisancheese.ca