What Québec Wants™

Where are the food swappers in Québec?

The Food Swap Network defines a food swap as a recurring event where members of a community share homemade, homegrown, or foraged foods with each other. Swaps allow direct trades to take place between attendees, e.g., a loaf of bread for a jar of pickles or a half-dozen backyard eggs. Swap events also include a potluck as an immediate food-sharing (and sometimes item-sampling) component. These events are a delicious way to diversify the homemade foods in your own pantry while getting to know members of your local food community.

It’s becoming a movement - what the Food Swap Network calls community-based food sharing groups. The Network’s website introduces visitors to people it calls “the core founders of the modern food swapping movement”. They are described as five ladies that have “spread the swap love across the US, Canada, and abroad by answering new hosts’ questions, describing food swapping to the media, and building communities around sharing food.”

That may be so but there’s another lady who’s getting a lot of attention.

Her name is Isabelle Baril-Ortley, a Quebecker living in California.

Here’s how she is described in an article by David Boylan published this week in The Coast News:

Baril-Ortley has a fascinating background, having been raised in a small town in Quebec where farming, foraging, hunting and trapping, fishing, making cheese, canning and butchering were a way of life. She mentioned that many of the photos of her youth include some type of wild game that she or her family had successfully hunted.

This was not hunting for sport; it was to fill the freezer for the long Canadian winters.

Baril-Ortley fondly remembers the canning parties with family and neighbors where everyone contributed and left with their fair share of whatever the group brought to the occasion. Baril-Ortley was farm/woods to table before those terms were catchy marketing phrases for restaurants. She really has walked the talk so to speak and those experiences formed the roots of the modern food swap.

I searched the Food Swap Network for a Food Swap in Québec and came out empty. That’s too bad. Perhaps Ms. Baril-Ortley still has family there and could encourage them to return to their roots as food swappers.

Walmart Supercentres aiming to tap into the 'emotion' of food in Québec

Interesting article in today's issue of The Gazette about Walmart's plans to open six Supercentres in Québec.

According to Chantal Glenisson, vice-president of operations for Eastern Canada, "food in Québec is more about emotion... it's about family and socializing". Let's see what Walmart does with that insight that Metro hasn't already done. 

Quebecol?

A University of Rhode Island study funded through a two-year, $115,000 grant supplied by the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers and Agri-Food Canada has identified more than 50 beneficial compounds in pure maple syrup. One of these compound is described as a novel phenolic compound, 2,3,3-tri-(3-methoxy-4-hydroxyphenyl)-1-propanol.

That’s not very exciting until you learn that this phenolic compound was assigned the common name quebecol.

Here’s the abstract from The Journal of Functional Foods – it’s all very serious:

Liya Lia and Navindra P. Seeram

Bioactive Botanical Research Laboratory, Department of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Pharmacy, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI, United States

The province of Quebec in Canada leads the world’s production of maple syrup, a natural sweetener obtained by thermal evaporation of sap collected from maple (Acer) species. As part of our laboratory’s detailed chemical investigation of Canadian maple syrup, a novel phenolic compound, 2,3,3-tri-(3-methoxy-4-hydroxyphenyl)-1-propanol, assigned the common name of quebecol, was obtained. Quebecol was isolated using a combination of chromatographic methods and identified by detailed 1D and 2D nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and mass spectral (MS) analyses. Liquid chromatography mass spectral (LC-MS) analyses revealed that quebecol is not originally present in maple sap. This observation, as well as the lack of a feasible biosynthetic pathway to explain its origin, suggests that quebecol is formed during the processing and/or extraction of maple syrup. Thus, the identification and biological evaluation of non-natural, process-derived compounds in maple syrup are warranted since such molecules may contribute towards the biological activities reported for this natural sweetener.

Not everyone is impressed by this science. The Montreal Gazette quotes Joe Schwarcz, director of the McGill University Office for Science and Society and a popular author and commentator on scientific issues. "This study is of academic interest, and that is all," Schwarcz told Postmedia News. "To suggest that maple syrup is healthy because it contains a number of phenolic compounds is rumpled thinking that needs to be straightened out. Phenolics are not rare — they are abundant in fruits and vegetables."

The thinking might be rumpled but the part that leaves me shaking my head is the name Quebecol. How convenient that academia would brand this compound in a way that clearly benefits the organization that funded the study. The folks in Vermont also produce quite a bit of maple syrup but don’t expect it to be an excellent source of Vermontol any time soon. For Vermont’s perspective on Quebecol, read this article in the Burlington Free Press.

Logo fatigue

 

Could Starbucks go from catering to ‘familiar strangers’ to becoming ‘strangely familiar’ to its customers?

Organizations have to update their visual identity from time to time.

Yellow Pages had to evolve, as it no longer dropped these thick phone books at your door allowing your fingers to do the walking.

Federal Express went short when it decided to be called what people called it; FedEx. Gaz Métropolitain did the same in Québec; Gaz Métro.

Tim Horton’s dropped the apostrophe when it moved into Québec; Tim Hortons.

Some brands try to look younger by contemporizing their identity with what is essentially minor surgery. Betty Crocker and Aunt Jemima had makeovers over the years.

Others end up looking older and perhaps wiser by reclaiming parts of their past with references to their heritage.

Others have no choice but to create something new following a “merger of equals” which it rarely is.

I get that Starbucks wants to align its visual identity with its strategic direction of broadening its core business beyond coffee. But I’m not so sure that this requires the coffee chain to drop both its name and the word coffee from its logo. Academics were quoted yesterday in the extensive press coverage the change is generating (the change's real purpose?) saying that Starbucks is more than coffee, it’s an experience. True. But it’s likely to remain an experience rooted in coffee culture for a long time. Starbucks coined an expression to refer to this experience: the familiar stranger. A reference to regular customers known to baristas only by the way they take their coffee. Let’s hope Starbucks doesn’t become simply strangely familiar to its customers.

By the way, I was interviewed on French CBC radio this morning on this topic. It’s called Radio-Canada despite being in the television and webTV business…

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Here's a very clever take on what we can expect next from Starbucks - by Tim Nudd on Adfreak.com

 

How do you take your coffee?

While taste matters most to all Canadians, Québec coffee drinkers give more importance to ambiance than coffee drinkers in the rest of Canada.

These are some of the findings of an Ipsos Reid poll conducted between September 17th and 21st, 2010, on behalf of McDonalds Canada.

Dinner conversations

What topics are acceptable at a dinner party among friends?

That’s the question Ipsos Reid asked 1,009 Canadian adults last month on behalf of the W Network.

There are no significant differences between provinces for topics such as work, illness or death, politics, money and religion. The only significant difference is in Québec where the topic of sex is acceptable at a dinner party among three in four Quebeckers (74%) compared to 48% in BC, 58% in Alberta and Man/Sask, 54% in Ontario and 66% in the Atlantic Provinces.

It’s no wonder that one of Québec’s most celebrated movies is Deny Arcand’s The Decline of the American Empire (1986).  Here’s the synopsis:

Eight intellectual friends - four men and four women from the Department of History at the Université de Montréal - prepare to have dinner together. The ensuing conversations range from their professional lives to politics, but primarily concern their sexual exploits. The group has plans to gather at a secluded house for dinner. While the four men prepare the food and reflect on their promiscuity, the four women discuss their own affairs at a nearby gym. At the dinner table, conflicts soon arise when Dominique reveals that she herself has had affairs with two of the men there, one of whom is married to Louise (also present).

How about a double double with Stevia, Truvia or PureVia?

I love sugar in my coffee. And I’ve never adopted so-called artificial sweeteners.

Now an alternative appears to be gaining in popularity. A sweetener is derived from a plant called stevia, which grows in Paraguay and Brazil and has been used for centuries in South America. According to the Globe & Mail, it's already available in Canadian natural-food stores as a tabletop sweetener. But now companies such as Cargill Ltd. and Merisant Worldwide Inc. are extracting rebaudioside A, one of the   components that makes the plant sweet, and turning it into a zero-calorie, natural rival to artificial sweeteners like Splenda.

According to the same G&M article, consumer research firm Mintel estimates the market for products made with stevia could reach $2-billion (U.S.) by the end of 2011.

Last fall, Health Canada released updated rules that allow stevia and its extracts to be added as a non-medicinal ingredient to natural health products, which has opened the door to allowing food and beverage makers to expand the use of stevia in their products.

Stevia is available under various brands including Truvia and PureVia.

See this spot for Truvia – the all natural, zero calorie sweetener that comes from a leaf. Honestly sweet. Honestly?

Quebeckers and low calorie sweeteners

The all-natural aspect of a sweetener that comes from a leaf might change Quebeckers’ attitudes towards low calories sweeteners. However, for now, it seems they aren’t huge fans of the stuff. According to PMB 2009 data, only 7.7% of Quebeckers used a low calorie sweetener in the past 6 months compared to 16.1% of Canadians in the ROC.

The curious case of Nutella fans

Facebook Fan Pages are a telling sign of what’s popular. And the January 2010 statistics reveal the expected and the unexpected.

Michael Jackson leads the top 30 with 10,551,163 fans. Vin Diesel, Barack Obama follow. On the branded front (not that Michael Jackson isn’t a brand), Starbucks still leads with 5,331,423 fans. Coca-Cola is next with 4,103,026. Then Skittles with 3,555,983 fans.

Ranked #25 is Nutella. The hazelnut spread is apparently causing millions of Facebook users to join in the conversation.

As buzz.io writes “it’s safe to assume that most of the fans are from Europe but the craziest thing about Nutella’s high ranking is that it doesn’t advertise. Well, that’s not true; they spent $300,000 on media last year, which is pretty much equivalent to nothing. Here’s the impressive part: their Facebook page was created by a fan, Nutella has 5 million Google search results, there are 5,000 videos on Youtube featuring Nutella, and there are 17,000 photos featuring Nutella on Flickr.”

Why?

As ThreeMinds suggests ‘nobody really knows’.

Possible Reasons

Social media buzz experts credit Nutella's Facebook popularity to these characteristics:

1. It's European and people think Nutella is cool.

2. It reminds people of memories/trips to Europe.

3. It has such a unique taste. And oh yeah, it's too good to be true.

Then there’s World Nutella Day. The disclaimer says “nutelladay.com does not represent official views or opinions of Ferrero, S.p.A.”.

It seems to me that this what social media is all about when it comes to creating true conversations about brands among its fans. It starts with its fans. And there are serious Nutella fans in Québec.

Quebeckers and Nutella

We do not have sales data for Nutella in Québec nor do we have data on Nutella Facebook fans in Québec. However, it’s clear Quebeckers are huge fans of the stuff. 

According to PMB 2009, Quebeckers are significantly more likely to consume nut-based spreads. There are proportionally more heavy users of peanut butter in Québec. But the difference in reported consumption of hazelnut spread is striking. 8% of Canadians outside Québec used a hazelnut spread in the last month compared to a 21% of Quebeckers. So now you know where the Nutella fans are in Canada.

Get iFat

If you’ve had to eat in a typical US airport in between flights, you’ve seen the rows of quick service restaurant counters and witnessed what repeated indulgence at some of these establishments will do to your waist size.

Now there’s a web based tool designed to help you chose your meal from your favourite restaurant. Called Fatburgr, the site and iPhone application act as a repository of nutrition information for ‘all your favorite restaurants’.

The name Fatburgr and some of the headlines on the website give you an idea of who’s targeted here... Find Your Food, Jiggle Less.

And the portrayal of the typical restaurant patron leaves no doubt.

 

Quebeckers and restaurant types

Here is where French-speaking Quebeckers say they’ve eaten up to 4 times in the past month according to PMB 2009 (and the comparison with the restaurant habits of Canadians in the ROC). You can see the 'St-Hubert effect'...

Locavore chic

A follow-up to an earlier post about locally grown food.

According to a piece by Sarah Elton in today’s Globe and Mail, the ‘big food corporations’ are trying to tap into the ‘buy local’ zeitgeist. Her piece includes data from The Bensimon Byrne Consumerology Report. It also refers to one example of a large food corporation’s efforts urging consumers to ‘commit to eat real food’ – a clever tactic when you’re called Hellmann’s Real Mayonnaise.