In June 2014, I was approached and subsequently hired as a consultant to co-found The Great Canadian Cider Company. The underlying agreement was that I give up my existing business, all of the clients I had at the time, and focus all of my time on developing The Great Canadian Cider Company. In exchange, I would receive a 25% ownership stake in the company. After careful consideration and further discussions regarding the financing available, I agreed on the conditions that I have 3 – 5 years to wind down my business.
Once that was settled, our initial goal was that we achieve an organic cider certification, develop a line of organic Cider products and create a national company with facilities in the East, West and Central provinces of Canada. This was no small project. No company in Canada had ever marketed an Organic Cider commercially, let alone nationally.
To begin, I first began by attending CiderCon in Portland Oregon to get a handle on the industry, attend a series of cider conferences and make some contacts. A few weeks later, I enrolled in and completed a cider making course with renowned British Cidermaker Peter Mitchell. I then set about creating a company we could be proud of and create products which were quality driven.
The beginning of the website was very simple, developed as a single page design at this stage. At this point, analytics had been integrated as well as a newsletter and social media to begin getting ranked by Google and the search engines.
First, before we even had product, I conceptualized what all the product would eventually look like, then designed and built a small website (above) to start getting the domain name indexed, researched and wrote a marketing and business plan, then focused on achieving an organic certification, which took 18 months.
I then began to create what were destined to become award winning organic ciders.
During that time I sourced organic apple growers, which is far more difficult than that sounds. In 2016, I found one local grower, but after working with each other for a year, they wanted too much money for their apples or too much in the way of a partnership agreement. However, I had been busy developing other potential contacts. I spent time visiting local landscaping and greenhouses and talking with the owners and by 2017, I had managed to track down an additional five organic apple growers.
During this process, I hired an award winning Cider maker duo to join our team. As luck would have it, those cider makers were Michael and Mark Vansteenkiste, and they had their own Cidermaking facility and they agreed that collectively, we could convert to organic to achieve our certification.
I then set about finding a variety of different production facilities, including canning and pasteurizing facilities, to work with to get the product ready for distribution. As it turned out, we chose to work with Sessions Canning, a mobile canning group who came to our facility to do the canning.
During this implementation process, as Co-Founder, Creative and Marketing Director, I conceptualized and developed all of the branding for all of the products. This included all social media, the photography and the development of the website.
I was also responsible for the procurement of the Ontario Business License, the Alcohol and Gaming Commission Licensing and integrating the barcoding system as well as being the point person to introduce and market the product to the LCBO.
I prepared all the applications to the LCBO and, once the cider was approved, visited each LCBO within the Greater Toronto area personally or with my close friend and associate, Tom Liszt, to introduce staff to the ciders.
Tom was a key reason we achieved wide spread distribution within the LCBO as he was relentless in developing and maintaining exceptional relationships with virtually every LCBO Store in Ontario.
In 2017, the very first Cider we created, Not Too Sweet (above), won a Bronze Medal at GlintCap, the worlds largest international Cider competition.
That same year, our Nice & Dry Cider was awarded Best in Show at the Toronto Cider Festival. An award-winning annual festival and the largest of its kind in Canada, the festival creates a fun, unique and exceptionally memorable experience, emphasized by live entertainment, exclusive cider offerings and delicious food pairings, all brought together with a unique cohesive theme. In short, the best cider makers in Canada come for this three day event and we won Best in Show in 2017.
These were big awards for us. We were breaking ground here as there were no other entries of organic ciders, so we were being judged beside the entire industry and we were winning awards.
Being chosen Best in Show at the Toronto Cider Festival in our first year ever at a festival gave us instant street credibility and really helped us get our ciders into local bars.
My favourite cider was the Hopped Up. This was the cider I was prepared to put up against all the local beer pilsners and I know in my heart that given time, this cider would have made a big dent at the LCBO. Created with locally grown organic Centennial Hops, a somewhat rare hop – they are a great dual-purpose hop and can be used successfully for both bittering and aroma. Centennial hops are characterized by aromatic pine, citrus, and floral notes. The result was a balanced cider with hints of citrus.
If you like Pilsners, you would have loved this Cider.
The 2019 Website Iteration
Since the website was our single most visible piece of advertising, I chose to develop a series of beautiful banners featuring the Ciders Michael Vansteenkiste and myself had created and also integrated a Stripe online shopping system and integrated in real time where our ciders were available. This was an absolutely state of the art website in 2019.
I made certain I copyrighted the creative and when the partnership dissolved, I maintained the copyright to the files.
People who browse while on-the-go have very different needs than those sitting at a desk. Responsive web sites re-organize themselves automatically according to the device viewing them, so that the same website provides a great experience everywhere.
It was important that The Great Canadian Cider Company’s website integrate Responsive Design as a crucial element of the new website initiative and the results were an excellent completely mobile compliant website where visitors could order online on a mobile device.
Accepted by the LCBO
In September of 2017, through our hard work, the Nice & Dry Cider was accepted for distribution in the Liquor Control Board of Ontario. By September 2019, we were in 350 LCBO & Grocery Stores across Ontario. By October 2019, we were accepted for distribution in all Metro Stores across Ontario and we completely revamped the website (shown above) and integrated an online store.
In Spring 2019, Food & Drink Magazine, published by the LCBO, did a small but important feature on our Cider. These little pieces of exposure are what grows a company incrementally and it is what I did best. We were paired up with a couple of other well known organic producers and were grateful for the exposure. It is these details and expertise I brought to the table which helped build this company.
This sophisticated modern take on traditional cider is made from locally grown Beaver Valley organic apples, pressed and cold fermented. Their simple less-is-more blend results in a crisp, clean, classic cider that is the perfect choice for any easy drinking occasion. Made with just three ingredients; Organic Apples, Organic Cane Sugar and Time. Lots of time.
In November of 2019, the Cranberry Cider we created was accepted at the LCBO.
This cider was created with locally grown organic cranberries from Ontario.
Our Awards
By Summer 2019, our organic ciders had won more awards that any other Cidermaker in Canada between 2017 & 2019.
In many ways, building this company from the ground up was the crowning achievement of a four decade career but after being diagnosed with cancer in 2019, the partner that had assured me he would be there for me walked away without looking back, not once checking in on me to see how my fight with cancer had gone. It was a disappointing end to something so promising.
While I was undergoing preparations for cancer surgery, I was also fighting to maintain my copyrights, which is why you will not see any of the above branded materials on the web or in the LCBO any longer. My ex-partner had refused to stop using our copyrighted original designs and we sued them to cease and desist and were successful in forcing him to not use the website nor any of the photography, Facebook or Instagram Media. I then became more focused on my health and simply walked away.
Since then, they have lost their listing at the LCBO and are no longer available in Ontario and even though that is sad, the partner I had brought it on himself.
Watch our first Canning session.
It was Yim and my friends who repeatedly reminded me that it was my creativity, perseverance and determination which won the awards and I am proud of those accomplishments.
I created multiple award winning ciders from scratch, built up our presence in the LCBO to 350 stores, 20 grocery stores and Metro Canada in under four years. We won more awards than any other cidermaker in Canada during that period. But really, looking back, I was given freedom from someone who was not trustworthy or capable of living up to their words so I probably came out ahead.
It is 2024 now and the partner I had in this endeavour has never once checked in to see how my health is. Looking back, why would I want to be a partner with someone who treats people like this?
I had to serve them multiple legal copyright infringement letters at the end of our relationship so they could not use the website or the branding I developed but they had much deeper pockets and fought me but at one point, must have realized the futility of that. Without my connections, relationships and creativity, the company failed within three years.
After my treatment, I approached the same cider makers and we developed our own organic cider, which they not sell from their farm. You can purchase that cider here; Twin Pines Orchards.
What became obvious to me during the final months of working with this ex-partner was the realization that it was time for me to move on with my life also. The last few months were incredibly stress filled, due to his actions, and I knew that I simply had to go. I had to go and deal with my health and focus on what the future was going to bring and as we all know, in March 2020, the pandemic hit and this project became my last big project of what I deemed my career as a creative professional.
It was time for me to move on with my life and focus on my health…
Creating an organic line of products also made it easier for me to shift to a plant based diet after surgery, which is where my interests have shifted.
UPDATE: Today, without my guidance, the company no longer has any product on the shelves in Ontario and has apparently ceased to exist. Yim always said that without me, it didn’t matter how much money this partner had, that it was my creative abilities that made it all work, my ability to work with a lot of people and keep the synergy and relationships easy and moving forward. The fact that it took less than two years for the company to vanish after I had achieved penetration in over 350 locations is an astonishing failure and based on how I was treated at the end, after I had been diagnosed with cancer, is my kind of karma.
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