Today’s episode is about Shira McDermott, a girl who grew up in hippie on the islands to growing Flourist Bakery in hipster East Van.
Shira McDermott the Flourist Recipe -
1/2 cup hippie homesteader
1/2 cup urbanite
2 cups wife, mom, blogger and entrepreneur
2 cups work experience
Generous pinches of family and friendship!
2 cups Janna Bishop
1 cup Bob, the stepdad and first farmer
1 Whole Austrian Flour Mill
Several handfuls of persistence, tenacity and creativity
Mix together first three ingredients. Sift in work experience. Add a generous pinch of luck in meeting Janna Bishop. Stir in Janna’s spirit, step dad Bob and his connections, mutual ideas, shared passions and beliefs. Fold in generous amounts of persistence, tenacity and creativity. Blend really well. Bake in a preheated oven. Turn down the heat when you see it rise and keep an eye on it until a beautiful golden crust forms on top. After it cools, sprinkle with enthusiasm, passion and much, much more. Enjoy!
100% Original. 100% Traceable. 100% Fresh.
www.flourist.com
www.glosays.com
TOP 25 BUSINESS PODCASTS IN CANADA
Today’s episode is about Shira McDermott, a girl who grew up in hippie on the islands to growing Flourist Bakery in hipster East Van.
Shira McDermott the Flourist Recipe -
1/2 cup hippie homesteader
1/2 cup urbanite
2 cups wife, mom, blogger and entrepreneur
2 cups work experience
Generous pinches of family and friendship!
2 cups Janna Bishop
1 cup Bob, the stepdad and first farmer
1 Whole Austrian Flour Mill
Several handfuls of persistence, tenacity and creativity
Mix together first three ingredients. Sift in work experience. Add a generous pinch of luck in meeting Janna Bishop. Stir in Janna’s spirit, step dad Bob and his connections, mutual ideas, shared passions and beliefs. Fold in generous amounts of persistence, tenacity and creativity. Blend really well. Bake in a preheated oven. Turn down the heat when you see it rise and keep an eye on it until a beautiful golden crust forms on top. After it cools, sprinkle with enthusiasm, passion and much, much more. Enjoy!
100% Original. 100% Traceable. 100% Fresh.
www.flourist.com
www.glosays.com
TOP 25 BUSINESS PODCASTS IN CANADA
GLO 0:06
Hey everyone for my guest today Shira McDermott, who is a co founder of FLOURIST bakery. This show has been divided into two parts. Sometimes the audio or the story just lends itself to chapters. So I've tried to honour that with two parts. Thank you, Shira for your generosity and sharing with me the first crumbs on your trail, from a young age to ultimately creating flowers for all of us today. I hope you were happy to share it. Part two drops on Thursday. I hope you enjoy her early story as much as I did. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Glo Says and today I'm so excited because I get to speak to Shira McDermott. And she's got a lot to say this woman is a powerhouse. So thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak with you. But I'm also always happy to support dynamic for thinking business lady bosses actually. And today I speak with Shira, her business partner. Janna isn't with us today. But Shira is a super cool veteran vegetarian and foodie talents in Vancouver. And by the way, she's a wife, a mom as well, as well as many other things. So we will hear all about her very soon. Thank you, Shira, for coming on the podcast. Thanks,
SHIRA 1:23
Gloria. Thanks for having me.
GLO 1:24
Yeah. Nice to see you again. Actually, we've met before because I was able to take a sourdough bread making class with Shira at florist. Was it maybe last year, maybe a year and a half ago with my friend Melanie. So that's where I first kind of crossed paths with Shira. I loved what she provided. I loved her space and their class and everything. So I have been basically following her ever since not quite stalking you, but I've been following you for sure. So, so thank you for talking to me. Okay, so let's get right into it. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background? I'm excited for the listeners to know about florist and what it is because it's not just a bakery or a cafe. But let's start with you. Who are you sharing? Where are you from? What's going on with you?
SHIRA 2:09
Wow, it's really nice to have an opportunity to think about things in this way it I would rarely go back there. But basically, I am a lifelong vegetarian. As you said, I am a mother of two. I live in Vancouver. I've been in Vancouver since 1994. I actually grew up in a hippie family. All silence. Born in the 70s my parents had four kids. They were basically hippie homesteaders who, back in that day, I was still pretty rebellious to buy a piece of land in the Gulf islands and raise four kids. My father was an artist. My mother was she worked at home. So we spent lots of time as a family growing up. And yeah, growing up on the island was very interesting. I think a lot of parts of that type of living, especially in this day and age can be easily romanticized. And there were there were really good parts and there were parts that I personally found pretty challenging. Mm hmm.
GLO 3:14
You had running water and electricity.
SHIRA 3:16
Yes. But I'll tell you I grew up without a plumbed washroom in my house till I was about 13. My dad added onto our house it was it was the kind of upbringing where nothing really happened unless my parents did it themselves. Right. Got it. The house tended to grow with the family and Gabriel at that time, was a very small population, probably maybe 2000 people. It only had an elementary school. So to go to high school, we had to get up very early. We lived very far away from the ferry. So you have to get up Get ready for school. Find your way to the ferry, either by bus or you know, back in the day, we actually hitchhiked Okay, yeah. quicker. Yep. And we caught the ferry to Nanaimo every single day to go high school.
GLO 4:11
Gosh, that seems farther. I thought you were gonna say the Sunshine Coast or maybe West Vancouver. So yeah. Okay.
SHIRA 4:18
Gabriola is closest to Nanaimo, which is, it's right in between Vancouver Island and Vancouver. But it's a 20 minute ferry ride. Wow. Okay, to get to Nanaimo. And so that was kind of regular daily life as a high school student. Going to Nanaimo that type of upbringing. Like I said, habits, good things, and it's bad things. But I would say what it was really good for is it really gave anyone who lived there growing up as kid an extreme sense of independence. It was obviously a different time it was before computers. It was before cell phones. We had real childhoods.
GLO 4:57
well At the minimum, you must be a very savvy person. I mean, because that's how you get savvy right or develop the street senses by getting out there and being independent.
SHIRA 5:09
Definitely, I would say that that's the biggest thing when I look back. And I think, man, I mean, I was, I was doing a lot of things that kids these days would never be afforded those types of reasons. Yes, we just did that as, as necessity. That was just a way of life. Right. And my parents really demonstrated that too, with, you know, the way they chose to live. And as much as maybe some things didn't jive with me.
SHIRA 5:33
I didn't feel that comfortable bringing friends around to my house without a working bathroom. And things in my home were so different compared to a lot of the kids I hung out with. But you know, now I look and parents were growing their own food. We were eating dominantly vegetarian diet out of necessity. I mean, they didn't make a lot of money either. And so the way that I eat today and the way that we celebrate flowers, it's very interesting to see how it's come full circle
GLO 6:05
Yeah, I like that. You're not just talking the talk. You've lived it. You're walking the walk to you know, it's great.
SHIRA 6:11
Yeah, that was really something that I learned from a very early age was that you eat well, you celebrate the food that you eat, you eat the best possible ingredients, you can. Obviously within your means. Yeah, I mean, I grew up eating lentils, and eating baked goods made with whole wheat flour. And a lot of those things just really come naturally to me,
GLO 6:35
right. Now. That's fantastic. So normally, when people start a business, they see a problem. They're trying to solve something. Was that for you? Like when you moved? I'm assuming you moved from there to at least to Vancouver. Anyways, you started living in a more urban setting. Did you start to notice problems with the way people ate? Is that what it was? Yeah,
SHIRA 6:55
I mean, I left home and I was super obsessed with healthy eating. Strangely enough, I knew I wanted to live in the city. And I wasn't interested in going to university at that time. So I basically graduated high school and immediately got a job working at capers.
GLO 7:15
Oh yeah. I know what that means. The fact that you and I know what that means puts us in the same window time window. Absolutely.
SHIRA 7:23
I worked at Capers on fourth. I was their youngest employee. I was 16 years old. I started out as a cashier, and I kind of worked my way through that business. And actually during that time, I always had a lot of energy because I actually started a produce wholesale company during a time where my partner and I would drive to the Okanagan and pick up fruit from organic farms, fruit and vegetables and deliver them to retailers. And then restaurants, you know, this was in the late 90s. So, okay. You really are the O.G. of the whole food movement. Shira? Well, part of it. There were lots of people doing these things. But I was very much driven by Yeah, just better sources of food. So to answer your question, yeah, I for sure. I, during that time, I I really expected that people in the city would be different. And I saw that the health food business is still just the grocery business and perfect. And not everybody that works. There is drinking wheatgrass and carrot juice and sprouting wheat berries. Yeah, I think there was a, there was a bit of a disillusionment, in a sense, early years. And after that, I actually ended up being a produce manager for 13 years. After that. I went, well, I had my daughter, my first daughter. And then yeah, I spent 13 years managing produce departments for specialty grocery stores. I worked at Meinhardt for four years, and I actually went to the first urban fair and I ran their produce department until 2007. Okay, so that was my, that was my time really becoming very intimate with the inner workings of the grocery business, the distribution channels, the waste inherent in buying and selling fresh fruits and vegetables. Getting to know a lot of the suppliers and really just seeing Yeah, as you say, like things could be so much better in certain areas. That I decided it was time for a change and I, I ended up in a sales role at JJ Bean.
GLO 9:35
Okay, well,
SHIRA 9:36
Coffee Roasters. And that was fabulous. That was really great exposure to like a business model that we actually ended up applying. Yeah, flowers, just thinking about the changes that have happened in the coffee industry. My exposure to the coffee business during my time at JJ Bean was was very formative. Yeah,
GLO 9:55
I can see that. Yeah.
SHIRA 9:57
Yeah. I did that for six years. made lots of connections in the restaurant business on top of, you know, my retail work. And it was shortly after that enough data being in 2013.
GLO 10:10
Okay. And along the way, did you meet Janna somewhere along the way? Your current business partner?
SHIRA 10:15
I did? Yeah. My husband bless him. He worked for mountain Equipment Co Op for many years. Okay. He designs bicycles. And he was at Mountain Equipment Co Op and Jana also worked there. And Jan, his background is in fashion design. We became friends through other mutual friends and just kind of hit it off. Wow.
GLO 10:40
And Is she a fellow vegetarian as well?
SHIRA 10:42
JANNA, I would say she's predominantly vegetarian. I don't think she cooks a lot of meat. So definitely, that would be the majority of her food choices would be vegetarian, right? She's food obsessed. I am and we bonded in the early years of our friendship, will be the fact that she followed a lot of popular vegetarian food blogs, I had sort of just started my Yes, food blog. And we just yeah, we just talked about recipes and what people were eating and what she was making. And in that, that eventually led us to, to me discovering that she had family farm connections in Saskatchewan.
GLO 11:19
Hmm. Okay, so that's Yeah, I always call it the crumbs on the trail. And I love all the crumbs on your trail. So far, because your background, I think you're right really lent itself to all of this, you really got to see the inner workings, right, or the sort of back what happens behind the scenes and a lot of the food business, which is great. And your experience, you know, as a manager of produce, and just being familiar with the whole grocery store thing. That's a great. And I like that JJ bean combination, because I can see that actually in your business, too. Yeah. Like you were laying the bricks to lead you here. I really think so. I know. Yeah.
SHIRA 11:58
I need to see looking in the rearview mirror How? Yes, I would hope most people can kind of look back and see that there's a lot of stepping stones. But yeah, they've all been really useful.
GLO 12:09
Yes, no, that's great. And when you started your food blog, I mean that blogging was so big, right in the sort of what mid what, early mid 2000s till now, right. But it started. So that must have been a great outlet for you to talk about food since you appreciate food so much from the ground up.
SHIRA 12:27
Yeah, I mean, I totally stumbled upon blogging by accident. I did not intend on becoming a food blogger. Funny enough. I had with all of my excess energy. I was working at JJ bean at the time. And I actually started in a not for profit, which no longer exists. Okay. I decided I wanted to create a charity that fed people in the downtown Eastside, and for a time, we had the full nonprofit set up, we did weekly cooking classes at the Strathcona Community Center. Okay, yeah. Teaching kids in grade two and three, how to you just introducing them to basic cooking principles, right? With Whole Foods, right. And out of that project, I ended up just sharing very simple recipes. And then sort of discovered through that process that I actually really just enjoyed taking the photos. And doing so seemed to also inspire people to want to make the recipes. So it seemed like a great vehicle to keep exploring that. And then I ended up having this food blog and the nonprofit just became too much for me to manage.
GLO 13:38
Well, the food blog "In pursuit of more" won an award by Taste Canada, right. A few years ago. It did. Yeah, that's amazing. And I didn't know you through your food blog, but I do follow your Instagram. And there's such beautiful pictures on there. Like, I'll look at it and I'll be like, yeah, I could eat vegetarian today. I could do that.
SHIRA 14:02
Wow, that's really informed a huge part of our strategy with Flourist as well. So they all tie really well to Yeah,
GLO 14:09
Yeah, no kidding. Okay, so you and Janna became friends and you talk to us friends do write about the mutual interests and things that you have. But agenda? That's right. I forgot one of you has a connection to farm. So how did that all start?
SHIRA14:21
Well, there were a couple of conversations as we were becoming better friends. And I think we both remember with great clarity. first time we ever discussed it was at a friend's Christmas party. And it was the first time Jana had kind of just casually mentioned that her dad was a lentil and chickpea farmer. And I remember it because it was it was just like my jaw dropped. All these years, my mother had worked in health food stores, everything was centered around these Meccas of the latest health food products. Yet the bulk bins were just nothing. There was no branding. There was no Story, you would just go into the corner of capers on West fourth, which is where I worked and the bulk bin was just a sea of unidentified products with no story. And yet when Danna told me that she went home and brought lentils and chickpeas home from her farm, and that the thought of me knowing the person who grew my, my legumes was just sort of really revolutionary. And so from that point on, she actually, I think she was probably pretty jazzed by how excited I was. I don't think that was very common, right.
GLO 15:37
I love it. I love that. Well, I mean, lentils and chickpeas are like the foundations of your meal plan, right.
SHIRA 15:44
100% and so I had already begun my food blog and, and I remember when she brought me a couple bags home, and I started cooking with them. And the chickpeas when I cook them, honestly, Gloria, it was it was completely life changing. Like, oh, I never knew that chickpeas could look so beautiful. They could taste so beautiful. They could cook so quickly, they would be so big.
SHIRA 16:11
as I kind of went down this path with using these products, we started to talk more. And I do remember one night that we went out on a social engagement, and we ended up having a drink later. And Janna shared with me that her and her stepdad, Bob, who is the farmer, they had discussed the deficiencies in the market for a number of years, they'd both become aware of them. Bob would come and visit Jana, he lives in Saskatchewan, but he would come to Vancouver to visit Janna. Yep, he would go to unnamed high end grocery store chains. And Bob would just point out, these lentils have this disease, and this has this form of blight. And he'd say the majority of the of the products that are made available to us, even in very high end places. They're not even animal grade feed. Wow. Because all of the good stuff, all of the good stuff gets exported. Mm hmm.
SHIRA 17:11
Typically including our wheat due to the US.
SHIRA 17:13
Our wheat goes all over the world. Okay. Yeah, Canadian wheat gets exported all over the world, including Italy and France were interesting, are known for their wonderful quality. We products. People, they travel there and they say, Oh, I can go to France and I can eat the bread and I great. What is it about their wheat? But it's not French wheat. It's Canadian wheat.
GLO 17:39
It's just wow, okay. I totally get this whole thing.
SHIRA 17:46
so that night Janna kind of loosely shared with me, this idea that they had had making these products available and creating a business. And that was really when it was born. Yeah,
SHIRA 18:00
we were like, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I had left my job at JJ Bean. I was sort of like figuring out what my next steps were had started my company. Yeah. And literally spent a couple days thinking about it. And I phoned Jana and I said, I think we should start this business and she just said, Okay. And we did we just we kind of started right away. Fantastic. Okay, so
GLO 18:23
in my layman's understanding, you're basically getting people to know where their grain is from, like the wheat grain, the lentils, the chickpeas, just like we all know where the coffee is from now, right? And even tea leaves to some extent and you know, other foods, right meat, especially eggs, all that. So you're bringing it back to dry goods like lentils, chickpeas, I don't know what other things you carry peas.
SHIRA 18:49
Yeah, we have lentils. We have some beans, pinto beans, black beans, navy beans, lots of lentil varieties, and grains like cane walk Canadian grown cane raw crystal wheat berries, Pharaoh.
GLO 19:01
Yeah, farro. I've seen that. Okay, I know I'm jumping a bit. But I have to tell you, I'm very excited when you talk like this. Because I first came across, I think it was lentils, lentil products in a brown box. And it had a picture of a guy on it. And at the back, there was his story. And I thought, Oh my gosh, like how and this was a few years ago. I know because I moved back to Vancouver a few years ago. And it was on fourth and I believe it was at beyond bread. I want to say is that your product? Or is that someone else's product? That was probably ours? Yeah. Okay, because the brown bag? I think it is because I think I've seen it at your store as well. Actually, for the listeners. I do order from flowers, but I go online. So I'm not always at the store. But I'm pretty sure I've seen that box. But anyway, I just remember thinking to me, I thought it was revolutionary to read about this dry good product and where it was from because one I was like, hold on Is this right? They are saying it's grown in Canada because you know, I didn't think you kind of couldn't grow anything. Canada. Now I know that sounds terrible, but you're not. I mean, I wouldn't think that know for sure. Right. And then secondly, I looked at the story and I thought, Oh, how cool like I do like to know about him. And I like to know where these dry goods come from. Because the same thing as you, I sort of avoid the big bins, because I always wonder how long they're sitting there for, you know, all this stuff. So I don't know if it can is better. I don't think it's better. But it's sort of that's the only choice you've got at a regular grocery store, right? It's either these big bins of identified things I've been there for who knows how long or some other mushy thing that sits in the can, but it's BPA free. But it says For how long that sort of the choices. So Wow, that is amazing that you did that. I have to say what you've done is revolutionary.
Outro -
Revolutionary is what I think of Shira and Janna's idea to turn the shipping container around and keep these locally grown healthy, wholesome grains in Canada for our own consumption. And guess what? These flour products can ship all over North America. Check it out on www.flourist.com. That's FLOURIST dot com.
Follow me at Glo Says on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. Join me on Thursday for part two of Shira's story.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai