Hippie to Hipster: Locally Grown and Freshly Milled Flourist (Part 2)

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

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Transcript

GLO  0:06  
Hey everyone, welcome back to Glo Says, where we continue today with part two of florist with Shira McDermott. Okay, go ahead. So what happened? You started this, you got together, you were excited, you probably had that kind of excitement, right? When you're starting something new can't stop thinking about it. Yeah, and not cheesy, but

SHIRA  0:30  
I mean, I still wake up and feel excited. Amazing.

GLO  0:33  
That's great to hear,

SHIRA  0:34  
I really do enjoy what we do, especially as we see the impact grow. But you know, in those early days, wow, it was very challenging. In a lot of ways. We started out having just a few contacts, starting with Janna stepdad, Bob Wallace, he was growing chickpeas at the time, he has since stopped, but he became pretty important supplier to us. And through Him, we were able to meet some other farmers. And we kind of started with a very small roster of maybe three to four different farmers that would talk to us, keeping in mind that farmers, by and large, are quite established. Farming tends to pass through the generations, land passes through generations. And they're just used to doing business in a certain way. And that usually means selling their entire crop with one or two phone calls to a big company. It gets sold by the truckload, and they never see it again. Yeah, yeah. And there's nothing really there. You know, nobody's telling their story. There's no real recognition, they just kind of, it's very transactional,

GLO  1:45  
or just selling a commodity kind of thing.

SHIRA 1:47  
Definitely. Yeah. And grains and beans are traded on the commodity market, just like gas, there really, typically has been no difference. And that was a huge motivator for us, you know, why is this massive part of our food supply?

SHIRA 2:04  
You know, as humans, we all eat grains and beans, you know, whatever type of bread we eat? How is it that we've allowed it to be treated like a commodity? How is it that we have accepted that all the good stuff goes away? And we're kind of left with this really inferior quality product so

SHIRA  2:25  
but the reason I say that is it was it's been a challenge, and it's getting easier now. And we have lots of lots more established connections with farmers. You know, it's very difficult to, to convince them to sell us, you know, right. Yeah. Yeah. pounds on a pallet. You know, this was a bit of a headache, and to have these two city women or gals, whatever you want to call us, you know, on the map and be like, Hey, we want to tell your story. Can you send us a picture, we're gonna have an illustration done, and you're gonna go on our website, and it was very foreign.

GLO 3:03  
Imagine it was an interesting conversation for them at the dinner table, but not much more than that.

SHIRA  3:08  
Yeah. Well, we'll see where this goes. Right. But we managed to convince enough of them. Okay, we started bringing whole grains and beans in. We did our business plan, and we secured a loan, and we did purchase a flour mill, our first flour mill, it was from Austria. Wow. Janet and Tyler Tyler is Janice husband, they actually were able to go to Austria.

GLO  3:33  
Oh, wow.

SHIRA  3:34  
In the summer of 2014, to see where the meals are made, and meet family who, okay. The family company? Well, and so we purchased the first mill, and it arrived. I believe it was early 2015.

GLO 3:50  
Okay. Let us use it. Oh, why? Well, first of all, okay, how big is it? Is it the one that's sitting in your store?

SHIRA 4:01  
Yes, we have two of those. So we bought a second one to go in our store. So that's the same size as the one we currently have.

SHIRA  4:08  
Okay, on our warehouse, so it came in through customs, and then they're like, what are you gonna do with it? We're gonna make flour. And they said, No.

SHIRA 4:15  
And the city was like, No, we don't know what this is. We don't have a box we can check. Well, no, just because they didn't know as usual. Yeah, no one had ever done it. And so of course, it actually got tied up with the city for two years. Oh, my two years. Wow. Yeah. And during that time, we had already started the business. So we we really, were left with the task of marketing and selling the whole grain and be inside we couldn't mill any flour. Right. Okay, sorry. 

GLO  4:47  
Let me backtrack a little bit. So you started branding and marketing these grains, right. And you started to get more farmers on board. But your idea really was to go for flour was that it like that was the main thing.

SHIRA  5:00  
Yeah, I mean, the traceability was the vibe behind the whole business. It was really our mission was to provide traceability in this important food category, right area where we saw the most opportunity for the greatest impact with really with flour. Yeah, and you're right, you're right. Yep. Yeah.

SHIRA  5:18  
And so our whole kind of existence became sort of focused on what's the conversation with the city today? Yes, what is the status of this latest thing they've asked us to do? All the while, yeah, we had rent, we had bills to pay. And so we really just kind of hit the ground, putting our retail product in as many stores as possible, which, which might have been when I came across. Yep. And that was really handy. You know, I was able to kind of utilize my sales background. And it's awesome that so many retailers, especially in Vancouver, I mean, people love to stock a local product. So it was not super challenging. I mean, people were very happy to support the brand and, and carry the product. But it was still early days for people to as you say, your options for a product like chickpeas, our mystery bunk beds, which you know, a lot of people are wary of, or cans strictly because there's also a convenience factor there that can't be ignored. We're busy, we want to make good choices, we want to eat as well as we can. But we don't have a lot of time we don't, we don't want to have a pot of beans, boiling over the stove for five hours and actually still end up being not very good.

GLO  6:39  
Might as well by the can kind of thing, right?

SHIRA  6:42  
We'll just buy the Can I can open it and drain them. And I'm good to go. So we spent a lot of time in grocery stores, demoing our recipes, we would make big batches of salads, we would set up, set up a demo and we would chat with people in Whole Foods and lots of different retailers and just feed them.

SHIRA 6:59  
Yeah, and engage with people in a conversation about about better dry goods. And why it's a good idea to cook your beans from scratch. It's way better. But understanding that people have typically not had great experiences with it. Yep. Because of the options that are available to us. Right. So one customer at a time, we would say take this box home, batch cook your chickpeas, you'll get nine cups out of this $10 box. Yep, you get nine cups of cooked chickpeas, you cannot buy cans for that price, and your experience will be better you'll digest them better. Well, and here's some recipes. We did that for a number of years until we were able to fire up the mill.

GLO  7:42  
So you're educating from the ground up? Yes, one by one.

SHIRA  7:46  
Yeah. And that really informed our strategy behind sharing recipes and really kind of showing people how they can cook better for their families and do so in a way that also tastes really good and feels really good. Yep, in your body, which is great. But Gosh, as a business person, it

GLO  8:04  
takes a lot of tenacity and perseverance to keep up with it. When you've got this gigantic mill sitting. I don't know where they keep it. Let's just say customers where the city is telling you No, not today. And you have to keep going back. And then Meanwhile, you still have to you've got bills to pay, like you say. So you've got to keep pedaling, for lack of a better word, all the grains and things that you have, right and the commitments you've made. I mean, I think a lot of entrepreneurs could identify with that. That's not an easy time. kept going. So that's fantastic that you kept going. I'm sure there are many times where you're like maybe we shouldn't bother with the melody.

SHIRA  8:41  
Anyway, it's almost like humiliating, we would show up at at our warehouse. mill was just sitting there was this really nice accessory that we would put things on. Right?

SHIRA  8:52  
storage unit. Yep.

GLO  8:53  
Yeah. look beautiful, right. It's beautiful.

SHIRA  8:56  
Thankfully, we did persevere. We were very lucky to have each other.

GLO  9:01  
I think that helps. Yes,

SHIRA  9:03  
yeah, I know a lot of people, especially other entrepreneurs that we talked to, when I meet people who are in business by themselves, and especially people, you know, marketing a product, in particular, the product, the food business is very hard. Yep. I really commend people who start a food brand and sell or make and sell a food product on their own. Because I know how hard it has been for us. Yes, but we have you know, we've been a team. And so there have been lots of difficult really challenging times. But with Janice having an off day, I'm having a great day and vice versa. And we're kind of there for each other. Very rarely are we off at the same time. Yeah, I would find it really challenging to be by myself.

SHIRA  9:48  
I think so. I think so. And I think that's valuable. You said that I think the food business isn't easy. You know, it seems easy to start and everyone loves food. It's a very friendly thing to be in but it's a bit All right, you put your time and effort into it. And it's not easy. So all the more we have to know the stories of the people who are successful.

SHIRA  10:08  
And I think it's even more challenging for people who want to do things in a more disruptive way, whether it's just use better ingredients and support small producers. And until we get to that point where there's more of a critical mass, demanding these products and appreciating these products, there's accessibility issues, for sure, better food costs more. So when you're starting out and you're small, and your buying power isn't big, it takes a lot of resolve to to make those decisions. We're getting there. And that's why it's really exciting now, even just talking to people like you, we connected over a sourdough bread class, but the more people that discover how much better our flour tastes or how great they feel when they eat wheat berries, the more impact we make.

GLO  10:59  
Yeah, we see that. Yeah, no, it's great. We could go down this road a while because I know you've got a lot to offer. But our time is somewhat limited. So why don't I ask you some fun questions. But jumping off that, though, to transition? What does keep you motivated, though, besides each other, right? And this, you believe in this for sure. But what else? What else have you found?

SHIRA  11:23  
I think connecting with our customers and seeing that we make a positive impact in people's lives is why we do this. And you know this by feedback to people? Yeah loyalty. Yeah, I
mean, when we meet people who just thank us for what we're doing when people write to us and say that they haven't been able to eat bread for 10 years, because it makes them feel really terrible, that they can eat bread made with our flour, because, you know, it's a pure product. There's no additives. It's not processed, or a sense of community when people are posting the pictures of the bread they bake or a recipe that they made. Having a positive ripple effect is incredibly rewarding.

GLO 12:06  
Mm hmm.
Yeah, no, I bet it is. So yeah, great. I'm glad that community is supporting you that way for sure. So what do you consider yourself? I was thinking when I was reading this, are you a flour maker? Are you a grain dealer or your bread whisperer? What do you consider yourself? Oh, goodness. Wow.

GLO 12:27  
I think you're all those things! But go ahead.

SHIRA  12:29  
Yeah, I mean, I'm getting better at being a bread whisper. I made bread Actually, this weekend. For the first time in a while. Jana and I needed to test a new recipe that we actually have coming out for a sourdough pool. We've had a recipe up for a while. But we've just gotten some feedback that it needed to be tweaked. And so we've got a new one. And it was really awesome to have such a successful go at making my loaf. I guess we did. Right. We did internal, a lot of the a lot of the skills we were kind of teaching to the people who've been in our classes for all that time. Okay. I don't know. I think first and foremost, I would consider myself a food lover and hopefully, a change maker.

GLO  13:13  
Yes, I would say so. Yes. I would agree with that. Sit with that one. That's a good one.

GLO  13:20  
What's your favourite way to eat your bread? butter and salt? Oh, you're like me? I think so too. What's your favourite way to cook tofu? I noticed that on your pictures in your blog, you have quite a bit of literature on tofu. What's your favourite way to cook it and what kind of tofu stuff as a vegetarian I've eaten tofu for my whole life. The recipe that I make the most has to be my big tofu triangles. Okay, it's a recipe on my personal blog. It's incredibly easy to make, and it's totally foolproof, you cannot mess it up. Okay. It's the one most used by other people as well. And it will actually make someone be able to appreciate tofu if they've never had it before or not

GLO 14:03  
variances with it. Okay, and do you find yourself making the tofu ahead of time and then just sort of eating from the fridge all week? Or what do you do because it takes a long time to know this specific recipe, you'll have the ingredients in your fridge,

SHIRA 14:18  
it's basically ketchup and soy sauce. And then you you just don't need to do it in advance at all. Just cut the tofu. dip it in the sauce and bake it and it's ready in 30 minutes.

GLO  14:30  
Okay, wow. Well, I'm going to try it because that is one thing even for me. I mean, I'm of Asian ethnicity. I really should know tofu. But I don't know it that well because we didn't eat that much of it. I would say we'd go out to eat it and whenever we ate it, it was always with meat right? There's like mapo tofu or you know, something like that. Or it's deep fried. So it's which is good. But

SHIRA  14:56  
there's so many different ways to enjoy it but this by far, okay, so Once in mostly, it's the easiest to make your baking it which is really nice. There's no fry master cleanup, there's no frying pan, you're not cooking with a bunch of oil. So you also feel really good after you eat it.

GLO  15:11  
Okay, that's good. What grain Do we all need to have in our kitchen? grain? Or what product? If I came into your store and I had to buy one product? Which one should I

SHIRA  15:21  
I would definitely recommend everybody needs to experience flowers, chickpeas or French lentils. And right away, you need to try the Civic red spring, or the sifted red. People just completely both can work in all applications where all purpose or bleached flour, yeah, it will work. And it will improve your health, and it will improve the flavor of anything that you make with it. Okay, cool.

GLO  15:49  
Are you guys planning to add more like, Are there a lot of flours available that we just don't know about yet, as a public do not, I mean,

SHIRA  15:57  
it really just comes down to the grain varieties. And so our most popular flour, the highest in demand is the sifted red spring, which you're probably familiar with. It's the it's the best flour for bread. Okay, and that's really because it's the grain variety that makes it the most suitable for bread. So there's really nothing else for bread. Outside of that. That's the one variety that Canadian farmers grow. Yep, bread. The sifted red five, the red five wheat, it's slightly softer. So it lends itself more to places where recipes that you would use all purpose flour in less suitable for bread, it just doesn't provide the same amount of gluten structure, okay. But outside of that, it really comes down to preference. If you want to experiment with different flavour profiles, or just digestibility issues a lot of people find they prefer how they feel when they use spelt flour. A lot of people have discovered einkorn flour, which is another ancient grain, it's very easy on the tummy. And at that point, it's really about personal preference. Okay.

SHIRA  17:00  
But other than that, I think what we're doing is, is really going to form the core of our business going forward. Right, okay.

GLO  17:07  
And what is it going to look like going forward? To me from your story, it's almost like a pinnacle dinner. I mean, you're in your zone, your zone of genius, this florist. But knowing you, you've probably got lots of other ideas and things going on. So where do you think FLOURIST will go or be say, in five years? Let's just say, yeah, I

SHIRA  17:27  
mean, without saying too much, we definitely want to continue to see the brand grow. There's a lot of people in the world that are still baking with inferior processed flour, and a lot of people who are striving to make better, healthier food choices moving away from eating animal proteins, whether it's entirely or just incorporating more more plant based proteins into your life. And so we think there's a lot of a lot of expansion, just from what we're doing. Now, we actually haven't been able to meet demand for our flour, especially at peak times. You know, our mills are currently at capacity. And so we have found a new warehouse. And we do have a third mill that will come when we're ready to move into our new warehouse space, which is, is twice as big as the space we have now. And so our goal is really just to keep our brick and mortar space going right now. COVID has presented obviously, its fair share of challenges for us. But where our online business is concerned, we ship flour all over North America.

GLO  18:35  
Wow. Okay, great.

SHIRA  18:36  
So focusing on just expanding our capacity to be able to just produce more and grow that side of the business is going to be our focus for the next while.

GLO  18:47  
That's great.

GLO  18:48  
I forgot to ask you when the city released your flour mill. 

SHIRA  18:55  
May of 2017.

GLO  18:57  
Okay, good. And then that's when you were able to sell the flour in the bags that you do, right?

SHIRA  19:02  
Yeah, we were able to start selling the flour. And that was when we started to have monthly pop ups where we actually had a baker, she ended up opening the bakery with us. And so once a month, we would pop up at Main Street brewing and we eventually moved to a restaurant in gas town to do our pop ups after that. Yep.

SHIRA  19:23  
And yeah, we would do monthly pop ups and we would do pre orders of bread and flour. Yeah. So people could experience what the product actually tasted like.

GLO  19:33  
Okay, cool. Here's another fun question I want to put in there. How much bread Can you eat in one sitting?

SHIRA 19:39  
Oh, I've been known to eat three quarters of a loaf. No problem.

GLO  19:43  
Really? Wow, that's a big loaf, too. I think I could do that too. But it was fresh with some butter and so I could keep up with you for sure.

SHIRA  19:50  
Give me that in a glass of wine and I'm I'm good. Yes, yes, that's

GLO  19:53  
awesome. Well, I look forward to all the things because I've noticed that you've been adding more great products like olive oil and I love the hummus, the green sauces. I actually always have a green sauce in my fridge, I should probably ask someone how long that lasts for. I try to get within two three weeks kind of thing. Yeah. And I look forward to what other things that you add, because I know that they'll all be well sourced and all good for my tummy. So I really,

SHIRA  20:20  
yeah, it's been really fun providing people with an expanded selection, since we started doing delivery. We are very excited to have people back in our space at some point, we hope we're able to do that soon. It will be in an obviously a limited capacity. But we've had a lot of a lot of fun marketing and selling other products, whether it's produced from local farms, some traceable dairy options, spices that we like to use. And it's been great to see people take advantage of that.

GLO  20:51  
I mean, they trust you, right, that you've got that so they will follow you. And whatever you provide, they'll believe that it's good for you. So I'm looking forward to what pieces your palette so that we get to buy it from you. That's great. Yeah,

SHIRA  21:04  
we just try to share what we love. And if we believe in it, we want to make it available to as many people as we can.

GLO  21:09  
Great. Thank you for your time and your story. It's been so great to talk to you. I really,

SHIRA  21:15  
yeah, it's been I'm very glad that we were able to take take this time. And yeah, congrats on doing your podcast. It's really cool. Well, congrats

GLO 21:23  
to you, too. And I appreciate what you do. You and Janna. So good luck. Take care. Thank you so much. 

GLO  21:37  - Outro

Personally, I have been using Flourist flours at home for a couple of years. Now, let me give you an example of how alive active and therefore fresh these flours are. I first ventured into the whole sourdough bread making thing a couple of years ago because you know it was popular and fun, and who doesn't love fresh bread out of their own oven. So for a good part of the year, I was feeding the starter regularly and it was thriving. Well eventually the seasons changed or I got busy or something. And I left the starter in my fridge and completely forgot about it for at least three months. I want to say it was even four or five. When I took it out it had this dark gray kind of black around the rim looking huge on top, they call it huge. And even though I normally just toss the whole thing away, I couldn't help but open the lid and take a whiff of it. But surprisingly it didn't smell sour or rancid. So I did a bit of research and I decided to just remove the dark stuff like kind of pour it out and scoop it out. And sure enough underneath the flour looked and smelled fine. I was totally shocked by that. So I decided to bring it back to life as some feedings just to see if it was you know, actually alive and what I could do with it was a bit of an experiment. I was prepared to commit to it for a couple of weeks. After one feeding with the Flourist Flour maybe two - it wasn't more than two feedings for sure the starter became alive and it was actually bubbling and hitting the top of the lid on that jar. And I was using like an earnest ice cream jar. Okay, so with the next feeding it spilled over. I couldn't even believe it was bubbly and it was spilling. Remember this stuff was dormant for months completely forgotten about in the back of my fridge. I actually made a little video of it on my Instagram at Glo Says from last year well before I interviewed here or even thought about asking Shira to be on the podcast. So no need to further convince me. I know you can trust this source. Check out her blog called IN PURSUIT OF MORE for heaps of recipe ideas using these dynamic ingredients. They've got lots of great recipes on FLOURIST.COM as well. 

Follow me at Glo Says on Apple or Spotify and I'll talk to you soon.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai