Back in 2002, Jodi Bager walked into a health food store on Yonge Street that sold gluten-free products. She had been baking grain-free – and hence, gluten-free – items in her own kitchen for some time after she had developed ulcerative colitis during her first pregnancy.
Jodi and Steven Bager
Family and friends agreed her muffins and biscotti were tasty and easy on the system. Baked with almond flour, they went even further than the gluten-free items marketed by the store for people with various food sensitivities.
Armed with that knowledge, she pressed her case with the store manager, who, after a tasting, agreed the pastries were delicious and asked if she could supply several dozen.
Back at home, Bager started baking large quantities. “That’s how it started,” said her husband, Steven.
From that humble beginning, the Bagers expanded their business from their basement kitchen to a commercial facility in North York. Although they now employ five people, including their former nanny, Lougie, who is the head baker, it’s still an artisan-style of production with hand-mixing and baking. Sales, however, are counted in the high six figures.
Incorporated a few years ago, today Grain-Free JK Gourmet produces muffins and biscotti for dozens of stores across the GTA and ships them as far as Victoria and Prince Edward Island.
Although baked goods formed the foundation for their business, in recent years the enterprise has expanded big time with the addition of five flavours of grain-free granola, as well as granola bars. They also are the exclusive Canadian distributors of a brand of almond flour that is a fine and powdery, unlike the coarser variety more commonly found. These now account for 90 per cent of their business, Steven said.
The granolas and baked goods are a premium product and are priced accordingly, said Steven, the company’s head of marketing and sales.
Appealing to a niche market, JK Gourmet is growing by 20 to 25 per cent per year. The company’s products are available in the GTA in specialty food stores such as The Big Carrot, Bruno’s Fine Foods, Chapman’s Essential Foods, Daiter’s Fresh Market, Noah’s Natural Foods, Nortown Foods, and Pusateri’s, as well as Whole Foods and even one Shopper’s outlet.
Steven said “our brand is well known in a small community. We love our customers, and they seem to love us. We have relationships with our customers. We have no third-party distributors.”
The products are already fairly pricey – a 350-gram bag of granola sells for $9.99 – and “a middleman would mark it up and it would become unaffordable,” he said.
All the granola is still hand-mixed based on recipes designed by Jodi, he continued.
Based on an informal taste tasting by discerning consumers at The CJN, the granola recipes are a big hit. And given that so many people in the Jewish community suffer from various digestive issues, Steven believes this is still a largely untapped market.
About 18 months ago, the firm receive a KSA kashrut certification, enabling it to expand into a market with many who are sensitive to gluten products.
Jodi believes her experience is one shared by many others.
Eleven years ago, when she was struck with colitis, she embarked on the standard medically approved treatments. She was prescribed various powerful medications, including prednisone, but she was concerned about all the side effects that came with it.
“Jodi was convinced that what she ate would affect how she felt, so she tried several diets,” Steven said. Some did not help, while others were too bland or boring to maintain for any length of time.
Then she read a book by Elaine Gottschall called Breaking the Vicious Cycle, which directed her to the “specific carbohydrate diet (SCD).” It called for the elimination of all complex carbohydrates, such as breads, pasta and potatoes, as well as refined sugar and processed foods.
“Honey is your only sweetener,” Steven said.
Jodi found that the diet worked. “She started feeling better within two to three months. There was a marked improvement in her condition.”
She joined the online SCD community, even becoming “a guru and mentor” to other people, her husband said.
She was baking for herself and her stepfather, who suffers from celiac disease, using almond flour and even bringing desserts into restaurants in her “magic bag.”
When she started supplying the health food store on Yonge, which is now defunct, it turned out many people who were looking for a gluten and grain-free alternative were impressed.
News of the products “travelled by word of mouth” and as demand increased, Jodi gave up a career as a teacher to devote herself to her growing business, while Steven left his job in management and marketing.
After they launched their website (www.jkgourmet.com), they began receiving orders from across the country and from the United States. They even have one customer who lives in Hong Kong and picks up his package of JK treats at a U.S. address.
In 2005 Jodi and Jenny Lass co-authored Grain-Free Gourmet: Delicious Recipes for Health Living and followed that up in 2008 with Everyday Grain-Free Gourmet: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. Both are Canadian bestsellers.
As for Jodi, she’s in remission and drug-free. “It is this journey to health through diet that inspired Grain-Free JK Gourmet’s delicious, nutritious products,” she said.