SBC November 8th – George Hanson, President of the Vancouver Island Economic Alliance (VIEA)

The Sidney Breakfast Club has been an active story-teller for Peninsula technology, manufacturing and retail businesses for many years. Yet just under the radar and quietly dominant is one of the Island’s most active food and farming industries. Food manufacturing is a major NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) category and Vancouver Island has recently become a national leader specific to this industry’s marketing and branding.

For our November 8th meeting we’ll be joined by George Hanson, President of the Vancouver Island Economic Alliance (VIEA – http://viea.ca/) who will speak to the highly successful “Island Good” campaign (https://islandgood.ca/).

If you were to prepare a meal using only food products grown, produced or manufactured on Vancouver Island, what would you include? How about meals all day or food for an entire week? That challenge was undertaken a few years ago by VIEA. They decided to serve only foods that are made or grown on Vancouver Island at a luncheon it was hosting. A board member was given a budget and given the task of purchasing foods for the event. What seemed like a simple enough task, turned into a scavenger hunt as the VIEA shopper combed the shelves and display cases of local grocery stores for Island food products. The products could be found on grocery shelves, but a great deal of diligence and label reading was required to source those goods. That exercise is now easier after the creation of the ‘Island Good’ point of sale campaign being championed by four retail partners including Country Grocer, Quality Foods, Thrifty Foods, and 49th Parallel.

As always, the meeting is held at 7am on the 2nd Thursday of every month at the Victoria Flying Club Dakota Café. Please join us on Thursday / November 8th / 7am and RSVP (john@harbourdigitalmedia.com) only if you plan on attending.