A new partnership will help support local food and beverage offerings in New Brunswick.
Savour NB Chair Blair Hyslop says an initiative like this is long overdue.
“New Brunswick is actually the last province in Canada to have a Saveur NB food and beverage partnership. So if you think about Taste of Nova Scotia or PEI’s Food Island partnership, these organizations exist provincially to help boost the strength of business in the food industry in their regions.”
He adds discussions around having a program like this in New Brunswick have been ongoing for around seven years, but it has taken a while with COVID and other things to rally government support and get everything together and aligned.
Saveur NB was officially launched in Dieppe on Wednesday.
“We have all of the industry associations, the pork producers, the Cranberry Association, the Maple Association, these kinds of folks. Then, we have the provincial and federal governments involved. Then I think there are about 200 folks who have signed up on our website to be members of Saveur NB,” Hyslop says.
He adds they’ll be involved in developing tourism strategies related to food, attracting food companies to New Brunswick, or developing mentorship programs to help startups, or others that are trying to grow, and to coach them through the next stage of their development.
“We want to grow the food business and food industry in New Brunswick. New Brunswick has an incredible history of successful food companies here. McCain Foods, which should be the most successful story, then you have Covered Bridge Potato Chips, Ganong and Moosehead Breweries, Fancy Pokkets and Mrs. Dunsters. There are so many stories and a long rich history of food companies, with the seafood companies and the maple producers and the blueberry producers and those kinds of things. There’s a lot of folks here with some amazing superpowers that can be used to help others be successful in this industry.”
New Brunswick households spend approximately $2.4 billion on food each year, and much of that food is produced outside the province. Saveur NB is an opportunity to increase and support the purchases of locally produced food and beverages that make the province great while taking pride in the exceptional food and beverages that New Brunswick brings to the world’s table.
Savour NB is fully funded and supported by the Government of Canada through the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA) and the New Brunswick Department of Agriculture, Aquaculture, and Fisheries (DAAF), both collaborative and strategic partners.
Over the next three months, people in New Brunswick will start to notice the Saveur NB logo at
Sobeys and Foodland stores, as well as at farmers’ markets throughout the province. Consumers are encouraged to purchase products with that logo when they shop.
More information on the program can be found online.
