Pretzel logic Why knot? say two local entrepreneurs to spicing up the salty classic By: David Sanderson Posted: 3:00 AM CDT Saturday, May. 27, 2023

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/05/2023 (1048 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Pretzels see a resurgence since COVID, blared a headline in a food-industry magazine.

The accompanying article reported pretzel sales had been on a steady decline from 2016 to 2019, but that demand for the salty treats rebounded at the onset of the pandemic, referred to in the piece as the “stockpiling period.” (Kraft Dinner! Toilet paper!!)

Pretzel sales remained strong in 2022 and again during the first quarter of 2023. A separate story attributed this fact to companies doing their utmost to provide consumers with new and innovative flavours of pretzels, similar to how one has long been able to choose between umpteen varieties of potato chips.

“Flavours continue to drive growth, and flavours like southwest style, garden vegetable, sea salt and Parmesan garlic all hit the market,” the article went on.

Here at home, two separate businesses began marketing seasoned pretzels in 2022. We sat down with the owners of both ventures to discuss the twists and turns — OK, mostly the twists — associated with becoming a pretzel maven.

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The barter system is alive and well.

Dianna Upton is the “Di” behind Lady Di’s Snackers, an Anola-based enterprise that turns out four varieties of mini-pretzels, including dill pickle and a spicy number billed as “pretzels to Di for.” One of Upton’s regular customers is a woman from the Lac du Bonnet-area who has cut a deal with a salon owner in that community.

“There’s a lady who always grabs five or six bags (of pretzels) from us, when we attend the (Lac du Bonnet) farmers’ market,” says Upton, seated next to her mother Judy Moffat, the year-old business’s bookkeeper, inside a commercial kitchen in Anola, close to where they live.

“One time, she shared a bag with the person who cuts her hair and now that’s all the woman wants as payment. Get her some pretzels and it’s as good as cash.”

Upton, a mother of two, guesses it was 10 years ago when she first prepared a batch of seasoned pretzels, to bring along to a family gathering. The same way she does today, she took a bag of generic, store-bought pretzels and turned them into something much more savoury, by dousing them in oil, and tossing the lot in a mix of spices, including cayenne pepper, garlic and …

Here Moffat interrupts, joking they’d be happy to tell us their precise methodology, but then they’d have to kill us.

Upton’s offering was a hit, so much so that almost every time she was invited to a get-together from then on, the caveat was that she show up with a bowl or two of her pretzels.

“When I wake up in the morning, I’m already in a great mood and can’t wait to get to the (commercial) kitchen. It doesn’t feel like work at all.”–Dianna Upton

In January 2022, Upton was dealing with health issues that had already cost her a full-time job. She was “really in a funk,” and had reached a point where she rarely left the house.

One morning her mother brought up her pretzels, reminding her how people continually raved about them, and how they’d said repeatedly if she ever decided to sell them commercially, they’d be first in line to grab a bag.

“She basically said I should start making pretzels to sell at farmers’ markets, more as a way for me to engage with people again and socialize, than as a way to make money,” Upton says. “And because she promised to be by my side, helping out, I decided what the heck, let’s give it a shot.”

Lady Di’s Snackers — so-called for the nickname she picked up when she was a bartender years ago in nearby Oakbank — made its official debut in March 2022, at an indoor market in Petersfield. Moffat says it wasn’t long before they netted their first sale. Thirty seconds after handing a person a small cup of pretzels as a free sample, the fellow was back at their table, wallet in hand.

“There was another gentleman that day who bought five bags from us, and spent the next half hour walking around the market, sharing them with everybody he passed, saying ‘you’ve gotta try these,’” Upton says.

Buoyed by their success in Petersfield, the mother-daughter duo “worked (their) butts off” last summer, by hitting a different market every weekend, pretty much, from May to the end of September. Their persistence paid off. In the fall of 2022, they were contacted by a Sobeys representative who was interested in carrying their pretzels in their stores’ made-in-Manitoba aisles. Ditto Red River Co-op, a short while later.

This weekend, Upton and Moffat are rolling out their fourth flavour, which, for the time being, will be sold exclusively at Pineridge Hollow, on Heatherdale Road. The people who organize the farmers’ market there asked if they could come up with a pretzel combining rosemary and sea salt. Challenge accepted.

“Down the line, we’re hoping to have them more and more in stores, so we won’t have to do as many markets and can have a semblance of a summer,” Upton says. “At the same time, we don’t want to lose that homey approach, as one of our favourite things is hearing people say sorry, they don’t like pretzels, then seeing their reaction when they try ours.”

“Down the line, we’re hoping to have them more and more in stores, so we won’t have to do as many markets and can have a semblance of a summer.”–Dianna Upton

Although current sales far exceed what Upton imagined they would be at this point in their journey, she can’t put a price on what the biz has done for her mental health.

“I’m so thankful to my mom for pushing me out the door, when I was having a rough go of it,” she says, wiping away a tear. “This has become something that, when I wake up in the morning, I’m already in a great mood and can’t wait to get to the (commercial) kitchen. It doesn’t feel like work at all.”

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It’s a safe bet Jay Gagne, the founder of Main Event Munchies, is the sole Winnipeg real estate agent whose resumé includes 425 professional wrestling bouts.

Gagne, 46, entered the ring as the Canadian Loose Cannon for 12 years, before parking his trunks in favour of a less strenuous job promoting the sport. One of the grapplers he was closely associated with was the Honky Tonk Man, the former World Wrestling Federation (now WWE) Intercontinental champion who was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2019.

Gagne spent a few years crisscrossing Western Canada with the Honky Tonk Man, whose given name is Roy Wayne Farris. Whenever they hit the road together, Farris would pack a few bags of spiced pretzels he prepared ahead of time, as a hotel room snack.

Gagne could never wolf Farris’s fare down fast enough. Ten years ago, he suggested the two of them team up for an appearance on CBC’s Dragons’ Den, to see if any of the dragons would be interested in bankrolling a pretzel biz, based on Farris’s recipe.

“Right when it was about to happen, he bailed on me, saying he just didn’t have the time,” says Gagne, seated in a Windsor Park coffee shop, not far from where he grew up. “He was open about how he made the pretzels, and basically gave me his blessing, saying if I wanted to pursue it on my own, I was free to do so.”

Gagne, who also ran a take-out pizza spot, Atlantic Pizza, before embarking on a real estate career, tinkered with Farris’s original recipe through the years. This past November, he decided to finally take the pretzel plunge.

“A lot of people on the internet say they bake (store-bought) pretzels, before adding oils and spices, but to me, that dries them out too much,” he says, comparing the idea of using pre-made pretzels for his snacks with buying chicken wings from a grocer, and developing flavours of wings by experimenting with various spices and seasonings.

Gagne, whose lone flavour to date contains hints of garlic, onion and Parmesan, is currently working with a distribution company that intends to ship his goods as far west as Alberta. And because the father of four is Métis, he is also entering into discussions with the Louis Riel Capital Corporation, a Winnipeg entity that supports Métis-run businesses.

“So yeah, all that, and just getting the word out,” he continues. “This summer I’ll be hitting the farmers’ markets hard and on Bomber game days, I’m thinking of taking a walk down Pembina (Highway), handing out free samples to people headed to the stadium.”

“This summer I’ll be hitting the farmers’ markets hard and on Bomber game days, I’m thinking of… handing out free samples to people headed to the stadium.”–Jay Gagne

Gagne, who intends to add seasoned nuts-and-bolts to his repertoire in the near future, laughs when asked if he’s always been a pretzel fan.

“To be honest, when my mom used to pull a bag out at the lake, I’d be like, where are the barbecue chips? But then again, I wasn’t washing them down with beers when I was a kid, right?” he says with a wink.

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca