Cooking up four brands of success

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/05/2024 (743 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It started with a batch of broth.

A simple mixing of two Winnipeg friends’ recipes: one chicken broth, one beef. Seven years later, the duo operates four local businesses and has expansion in sight.

“It’s been a crazy journey,” said Shawn Vidal, co-founder of Bones & Marrow.

He’s also co-owner of Pop Cart Wpg, a popsicle brand; Abiding Citizen, which sells drink mixes and bitters; and Juice Me, which offers “super shots” such as ginger to add to drinks.

First, Vidal was best friends with Ryan Wiebe, whom he met in university.

The pair played volleyball together. Now, they’re formulating an umbrella company to cover the businesses they’ve acquired and are hunting for a kitchen of their own.

“There were no big aspirations that this was going to become a job for us,” Vidal, 45, recalled.

He was making beef bone broth — created by boiling animal bones and joints — for fun in 2017, a hobby outside of his work at local concrete restoration company Muddruckers.

Meanwhile, Wiebe was teaching high school students.

He, like Vidal, enjoyed food. His wife is a naturopathic doctor who recommends bone broth to some clients; in 2017, a customer asked Wiebe if he’d make her some bone broth and he accepted the challenge.

Out came the chicken bones and water and vegetables. He kept testing different mixes, different approaches. Then, he learned Vidal was also making bone broth.

The two met to test recipes one day and mixed their chicken and beef concoctions together.

“It was just absolutely perfect,” Wiebe, 45, reminisced. “We decided we would be something unique.”

They gave the blended broth to Wiebe’s wife’s client and received positive feedback. Soon after, the friends completed their paperwork to start a business: Bones & Marrow.

It would be a side hustle, the men decided. They ordered black chef coats, filled large thermoses with their broth and headed to their first event — a 2018 market at the Victoria Inn in Winnipeg.

“We had very little idea of what we were doing,” Wiebe admitted. But he considers the day a success — an ego boost, filled with new customers and people appreciatively sipping broth.

The burgeoning entrepreneurs figured they were on to something. Soon, they were talking to wellness organizations about showcasing their broth during company events; they set up in bigger markets and grew a social media following.

A branch of Miller’s Meats contacted Bones & Marrow, wanting to stock products in its butchery, Wiebe said. The deal led to more contracts with butchers.

Bones & Marrow began expanding its broth line and adding soups.

Meantime, its founders continued their day jobs. Wiebe sometimes finished teaching and drove straight to the commercial kitchen they had rented. He’d supervise the simmering broth overnight, sleeping on a foam mat nearby before switching out with Vidal in the morning and heading back to school.

“It was not sustainable, obviously, but it was necessary to test the concept,” Wiebe said.

By early 2020, the business had grown too big for a side hustle. Wiebe opted to “take the plunge.” Around February of 2020, he gave notice telling his employer he wouldn’t return in the fall.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, he questioned his choice to drop health benefits, but “I haven’t regretted the decision,” Wiebe said about choosing full-time entrepreneurship.

He and a new full-time staff member shouldered most of the company’s day-to-day operations.

Sales grew during the pandemic, Wiebe remembered. Summer would be a different story.

Pre-2020, Wiebe and Vidal were fine taking a break during Manitoba’s hottest months. However, a lack of summer soup sales with salaried staff wouldn’t fly. Wiebe and Vidal brainstormed new business ideas but paused when they saw Pop Cart Wpg was for sale. In spring of 2021, they bought the company.

“It was the perfect kind of seasonality mix,” Wiebe enthused.

For the next two years, they operated both Pop Cart and Bones & Marrow. The latter company now sells its products within roughly 35 Manitoba stores, including Red River Co-op.

Purchasing Abiding Citizen came in late 2023. Vidal wanted to make Bones & Marrow/Pop Cart his full-time job, too — it required a new revenue stream.

Chad Friesen and his wife, who co-owns Fête Ice Cream, were already considering selling Abiding Citizen when they set up shop next to Pop Cart during an Exchange District market.

“It got to the point that either we slowed down to focus on our family and our real jobs or take it on full-time and expand,” said Friesen, a real estate agent. “Ryan and Shawn seemed to be the type of people who were willing and wanting to do the things that we had kind of dreamt about doing, taking it to the next level.”

Friesen now sees Abiding Citizen in local retailers — seeing his recipes expanded “brings pride,” he said.

The ink had barely dried from the last deal when Juice Me’s founder contacted Wiebe and Vidal to purchase the brand, Wiebe said. In February, the team acquired the business, its fourth.

Still, Bones & Marrow is limited by its production space, Wiebe noted. The company rents a shared facility; it’s looking for a hub of its own.

It’s also creating an umbrella company, likely called Prairie Stock Market & Goods, to encompass its brands.

Wiebe and Vidal’s team consists of 10 to 12 people at a given time, including casual workers; they’re constantly hiring, Wiebe said.

“We’re bouncing ideas off each other non-stop,” Vidal added.

Acquiring fellow entrepreneurs’ businesses is both challenging and invigorating, he said. It’s someone’s baby — they’ve invested potentially thousands of hours into the brand.

“You want to be respectful of what their vision is,” Vidal said.

However, he and Wiebe don’t plan on acquiring anybody’s business in the near future, Wiebe said. Instead, they expect to increase their brands’ presence at summer farmers markets, especially in Wolseley, South Osborne and East St. Paul.

gabrielle.piche@winnipegfreepress.com