E220 David Schaub

This week's guest is Dave Shaw, who joins us from Ottawa, Ontario. Dave is the creator and driving force of The Ketchup Project, a craft ketchup business that he started back in 2017. In a conversation with Dave, we talk about his life growing up in Waterloo, Ontario, and how he eventually landed a career as a chef, how he got the impetus to start The Ketchup Project, Dave's experiences selling his products at farmers markets, challenges with pricing and marketing, the impact of inflation on specialty products, we talk about Dave's hobby of performing improv, plus a lot of other topics. Make sure you check out at The Ketchup Project on Instagram, or check the show notes as always for the full list of links.

Enjoy the show. We are back with another episode of The Industry Podcast. Keep that Dan here as always. What is happening?

And that's still being awesome, just hanging out working a couple weeks left until the Univine M gets moved over to another company. There you go. And then I'm going to complain even more. No.

That is possible. Come on, thanks now. What about yourself? How do you?

Everything's good in the winter doldrums of the bar industry right now, so nothing too exciting happening on the end. We just kind of wait for spring. Yeah, that is a big dry January impact on your place. Yeah, that's dry January, Seth.

I just don't support it. Yeah, I get drunk all the time, so it's Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning. I will say that with the explosion of mocktails, that's helped us a little bit. Some people will still come out just with a social aspect and drink some mocktails, but generally, yeah, slower business.

I got to say the mucktails are a nice alternative. For instead of having a, I just have a juice or a diapoxy. Yeah, and previously a lot of mucktails were just heavy juice, basically. You didn't know what the fuck they were doing, but now we have...

Bartender is making amazing developments in the mocktail side of the bargain. Yeah, being a drunk, I got to admit that I should be tasty. Yeah, well, you just add alcohol. Yeah, I should add alcohol.

I should be making it everywhere. I know, right? So, all day long. Fortunately, mocktails are about the same brace as cocktails, now it's their next thing in my...

Okay, well, speaking of mocktails, if you want to come to a bar in January, and hopefully some of you still do, for mocktails or cocktails, check out my two spots here in the waterloo region. There's Sugar Run Downtown Kitchener at Sugar Run Bar on Instagram to figure out what's going on there. We have live stand-up, we have like burlesque, we have DJs, we have live bands. We have it all, so come check that out.

And then up town, Waterloo, it's Babylon Sisters Wine Bar, at Babylon Sisters Bar on Instagram to figure out everything that's going on there. Yeah, and if you're in need of alcohol for your home, or for your bar or restaurant, then hit me up at kypp at BabylonSisters.ca for wine from Malivoir in Beamsville, Ontario, or Terroir Wine Imports, or the Amazing Alora Distilling Company, if you're looking for spirits. You can email me directly, and I'm your guide for all of that. What else will we talk about?

Are good friends at Inbiblia? Yeah, Jean-Marc Dyches. Jean-Marc Dyches from Inbiblia. Inbiblia is an amazing app if you are a bartender at home or professionally.

All we can say is just check this app out, download it wherever you get your apps, and it's an unbelievable tool for bartending. Yeah, that flavor visualization chart is something else, that's highly customizable with all the flavors you want, anything you want. It is pretty awesome. Yeah, and if you're a home bartender and you don't want to even do that much work, then just talk to our friend, Ali, at alchemist.ali, that's Alie, alchemist.ali on Instagram, you can DM her there, and she will provide an unbelievable home experience for you.

Cocktails need right there in your own house. She does parties, she does cocktail classes, hit her up for any of that action. Yeah, if you're looking to run a bar program and you need some help, call her up, she'll give you a hand. That's correct.

If you're looking to give us a hand, then you should subscribe, follow, rate, or review the podcast. That helps us tremendously. They keep telling us that. Helps with the metrics, the algorithms.

Mm-hmm. Sure, nice. Or like I always like to say every week, just tell one other person, it's the easiest thing to do, take some minutes, send them a link, or send them a link to our new website, the industrypodcast.club. Yeah, check out the new website.

It's up. It's ready to roll. It only took us three years. Yeah.

But it is now active, so you can check that out. And you can email us at info at the industrypodcast.club, if you'd like to provide support for the show, or if you'd like to be a guest on the show. Otherwise, you can DM us directly at the industry podcast on Instagram. And the artwork there is done by the immensely talented Zakhana at zakhana.co for all your graphic arts needs.

Mm-hmm. That is always all of links to everything we talk about in the show notes as well. So just check that out if you want to see all the cool stuff. Yeah, all the cool stuff.

Yeah. All right. Speaking of cool stuff, we have a great guest for you as always. This week on the industry podcast today, joining us from Ottawa is David Chob.

How are you, David? I'm doing pretty good. How are you doing? All right.

Yeah. Getting through it. Getting through it. Thanks so much for joining us today.

Oh, my pleasure. Yeah. So it took me a while to figure out, because you had emailed us about being on the show. And then I was like, this name sounds familiar, and then you were telling me of some places you were working at.

And it literally only clicked about 10 minutes before we recorded that I knew, of course, with new you for many years. So it's great to see you again. And thanks for reaching out about doing the show. Oh, no problem.

I'm always happy to be the forgotten son of the Waterloo Food scene. It doesn't take long. It doesn't take long at all. Because you've been in Ottawa for how long now?

Coming up on 15 years. Right. You're probably forgotten about a year and a half. Yeah, just about.

But you did work for several years at one of the great restaurants in the Waterloo Kitchen, Waterloo region, and several of our previous guests on the show have also worked there. And that's been as we're working with Paul with four Paul Beamer. So tell us about that experience. That experience was my formative years, really.

I had very little restaurant experience before I started there. And basically the story as I remember it, it was now so long ago, was Paul was sending my good friend Lois to culinary school. And he needed someone to take over for her when she went to culinary school, with the intention of sending me to culinary school a year later. And that's literally what happened.

Just spent a lot of time in Garmond J. Spent a lot of time working my way around that little circle that is the Beamer's kitchen. And when I left, I spent four and a half years there. I got married on their patio.

Spent a lot of good times there, a lot of stress there. Still go in when I was just there last month, just for a quick visit, because I was in town. And I try to stop him whenever I can. But it's not always in my budget.

You know how it is. Yeah. Working for, I know he's soft and quite a bit as he's gotten older, but working for Paul back in the day could be a bit of a rough ride sometimes. So how did you navigate that, especially considering it was one of your first jobs?

I'll say I kind of got him at the beginning of his softening. Oh, yeah. From what I've been told. I mean, I definitely saw some shit, but nothing like the old days that I've heard from a few people from before me.

You know, he, I like to think he generally liked me and wanted the best for all of us. So, you know, I still, you know, he's still my mentor and still someone I talked to as often as I can. And I'm still inspired by all the food that I cook there. That's for a lot of people in Waterloo, that's not comfort food.

That's a fancy night out. But for anybody who cooked there for a long time, that's what you crave when you're craving comfort. Oh, right. Yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah. It really is. That's not cooking. Lots of rice and noodles and, you know.

Yeah. I mean, like deep down, it's based off of street food. And that's the cool thing about it. And you elevate it and you turn the portion into something quite ridiculous sometimes.

That was one of my biggest things I learned after I left that place, is that the portions there are huge. Yeah. I learned how to scale everything back just a little bit because I kept getting yelled at for why is there so much risotto on display, you know? And I'm like, well, that's a mean portion.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know what's funny though, is like I always say to people when they ask me if they haven't been there before, I'm like, well, you should definitely go. It's fucking amazing.

It's expensive. But you're getting two meals. Like you're taking food home for sure, right? Like, because the portions are massive.

Yeah. One of those giant swans came home with me like the long ride from Ottawa to Cooler. I was lucky to weather stay cold. But it was, you know, I went 100% comfort food and it was nice to kind of walk in and see my old friend, Rich, working there who I was back in, you know, 2006.

And he's back there cooking and it was really good to see him. And actually, your food was still serving too. So it was like all the old pulp. I haven't worked there since I want to say 2006.

Right. You know, old friends are still there. Yeah, it really hasn't changed that much. Like, obviously people in and out, but you like, I mean, Richard or Richard came left to get back, but Leanne still there the whole time and he's been there the whole time.

So he's doing something, right? And like, not like my original suggestion about Paul is not that he's some sort of Gordon Ramsay type character. Oh, absolutely not. He definitely does want the best for everyone it works for him.

And he's very invested in your development as a chef or a server. I've to this day, like, I go, you know, what would we do there? And I've used it as kind of like, if it would fly there, it'll fly anywhere. So I feel comfortable doing it anywhere.

You know, sometimes sometimes people know who I'm working for might have a different idea, but to me, if it works there, it'll work anywhere. Right. Obviously, that is one of your first jobs kind of like, what made you decide you might want to get into cooking for a living? Well, I had gone to school for radio, television and film in like the late 90s.

And it just didn't work out. It was a thing I thought I wanted. And I went to school and I'm like, oh, I hate this. Well, I hate, I've never been the greatest at school, if I'm being honest.

So I was kind of like, working for my dad, my dad owned, Paul William's pharmacy, Oberon Lancaster Street for 30 plus years. And working for him as a delivery boy, just, you know, scuttling a little bit. And my dad just kept saying, you got to go to school, you got to go to school, go to school, go to school, go to school. And so I looked through Conestant College and I feel like moving away.

I was like, that was one of the big problems with the radio television film was that I was away and it was uncomfortable for me. And I just looked through their guide and said, Chef for training program starting this year, six months plus two months of co-op. And I went, oh, I can do that. And if I hate it, what did I lose?

I'm out of here. Half a year out of my life. Yeah. And I went and it was it was great.

It was a lot of fun. You know, and I kind of fell into it. And then I started working co-op jobs, landed at Gulf Steakhouse for co-op position, filling a salad bar every day, doing all that, coming home as my wife says, coming home smelling like death because I just covered in like, like, steak drippings from 300 steaks on the drip grill. And then my co-op finished and got a job at Efels and spent, 2002, I want to say February to November-ish.

And that was when Paul came knocking on my door. I was sitting, I was in the Efels kitchen and Shannon came back and said, Paul Beamer's out there and he wants to talk to you. And I was kind of in the shit. And I went, okay, I'll talk to him as soon as I, this calms down.

And it kind of didn't calm down. And I finished up my shift at like 1 AM. And, uh, and, uh, and it says, oh, Paul's still out on the patio waiting to talk to you. And I mean, this is about four hours later.

I went, he's still here. That's a lot of make-a-loaf. That's a lot of make-a-loaf. Yeah, that's, uh, yeah.

That's what I first learned a thing or two about Paul. But, uh, yeah, he kind of gave me the loan on what he was looking for. And, uh, you know, so I had, I had, we'll say a year under my belt when I started at, uh, the events and this is late 2002 and never really looked back after that. Uh, in and out of always in food, but in and out of restaurants and butcher shops and catering companies and all kinds of stuff over the years.

I felt like it's sort of a question. But do you feel like it's just a job for you or do you feel like it's something you, you grew passionate about and that's why you keep doing it? I've grown passionate about it for sure. It's, uh, it's a big, uh, it's a big thing with a lot of folks in our industry is that I don't know how to do anything else.

Yeah, really. Like, I mean, my body's hurting these days a lot, but it's, uh, it's, uh, something that I can still kind of do. And I've learned how to like, you know, like when that pitcher loses a little zip off his fastball and he kind of becomes more crappy, I'm a little more crappy in my older age. Right.

But, uh, yeah, no, I'm still really passionate about it. I still care a lot about, you know, the food I put up for, any customers that I've done. I sort of got out of it and got back into it in recent years, but, uh, you know, I, you know, cooking for my family throughout, you know, COVID and stuff was really cool. And, uh, you know, just kind of like sort of reigniting cooking with love because there were a lot of cooking with eight there for a lot of years.

Yeah, sure. Sometimes the best food comes out of that. Yeah. You know, if you've watched the bear or anything else like that, for sure, you know, like it's, that part was relatively accurate.

Yeah. It's funny to say that because I do think that like obviously so much damage was caused by the lockdowns and, uh, during the pandemic, but there are, and we've had so many conversations about this on the show. There are these little nuggets that have come out of that, those forced lockdowns that were actually beneficial to the industry in a way, and a lot of it was sparking creativity and rejuvenating love for just the craft of like, uh, for people we talked to, whether it was making cocktails or making food. Oh, cocktails became my hobby during the early days of lockdown, for sure.

Uh, bought a lot of cocktail books. Uh, you know, I wasn't cooking professionally. I was just doing my ketchup thing at that point. And I just started, you know, like, I mean, I'm currently having, you said, pour yourself a cocktail.

I'm drinking a china and a groaning and I never would have made one of those even. Even two years ago, I wouldn't have made one of those. Right. Interesting little audience, something that came kind of cool.

It's funny. Like everybody else, I feel like during these lockdowns, and maybe it's because I was more on the ownership side at this point and like a little more stressed out. Uh, but everybody else got creative and with their cocktail making and making themselves great drinks at night, pretty sure I was just chugging chardonnay out right out of the bottle the whole time, but. Much like blind.

We were crushing them. Oh, God. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I will say I needed, I needed one bottle of whiskey for Mexican one for just drinking street. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So then at what point did you get the idea to start the ketchup project and explain exactly what it is.

Okay. I have been doing the ketchup project since 2017, but the first sort of inkling of a recipe for ketchup probably was about, I want to say even as early as 2012, 2013, I stumbled across, I was working in catering. My daughter had just been born. That's why I can kind of pinpoint the year just about.

And I found a recipe in, I want to say it was the St. John's cookbook by Fergus Henderson for homemade ketchup. And I just kind of went, huh ketchup? Like why would anybody make their own ketchup?

Like why would you do that? Like that's. Yeah. I was thinking that Heinz was perfected it.

Like what do we do? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Exactly. You know, like unless you're like, vermon organic, Heinz is kind of where it's at, right? And you know, we can have that long conversation about French is takeover in Ontario, but I mean, it's still, it still, Heinz is still the king.

But so I thought, I just decided when it was slow work, I was working in catering. I think it was probably this time of year, a little early January. Catering is very quiet after a really busy Christmas season. And I just started dinking around with the recipe and then I, you know, dinked around maybe four more times with four other different ketchup recipes and little piece from here, a little piece from there, a little whatever.

And then all of a sudden I'm like, like, at a restaurant going, hey, I want to make a ketchup for the restaurant. And they're like, okay, cool. Like, I'm like, I think it can save us a little money. Like, if I'm careful with this and, you know, I mean, you'd still have that bottle under the counter for people who want to, you know, real ketchup.

Yeah. I eat really sugary stuff. But, you know, and eventually I looked at the recipe and I went, you know, I haven't changed this in six months. Like, I haven't tinkered at all.

Like, this is a pretty standard recipe now. I wonder what could happen if I, you know, took a chance and started bottling this and got, you know, labels made and like, you know, maybe this is something I can do. And that's when I said to myself, I'm like, I don't know, I don't know what's going to come with this ketchup project of mine. And that became almost immediately that became the name of it.

Right. I later found out there was a charity organization in like a Belgium called the Ketchup Project, too. But they don't ever once in a while, I'll get tagged in a post. And it's like, nah, it's the one over there.

But okay, you know, but it's. That's funny. I just got an email the other day from somebody who said somebody was trying to collect the Babylon sisters domain name for somewhere, something in China. And I was like, yeah, what?

That's odd. But yeah, but that's funny how that works out. Anyway, yes, go ahead. No, no, it's okay.

And then I was working at a place here in Ottawa called the Black Hat Bistro. Black Hat Bistro. I want to say like the equivalent of like say Peter Martin's back in the day in Waterloo. Like it'd been around for like 30 plus years.

No, it was there when I was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So they had, I took over there, I started working for them in 2015 under a guy named Mike Farber.

That's when I sort of like, that's when I changed my Instagram handle to the Ketchup Project. Because I was like, starting to make it make it a thing. And I took over there, he moved on and I took over their kitchen and I ended up being their last chef. Like, now I would say like, I got it in wartime.

The restaurant was dying and I could feel it. But I was trying my best to like, keep it going as long as I could. And Canada Day 2017 and closed. And I went, okay, I can go on EI for a little while right now.

Like I lost my job through no fault of my own. Maybe this is the time to try and launch this thing as quickly as possible. And got to go in, had a launch dinner in September, got really sick in October, ended up in the hospital for a few for a while and down and out for a month. But by Christmas of 2017, it was labeled in on shelves.

Like just the one variety of tomato. And then in 2018, that spring and summer, I started at the farmers market. And that's when I started getting really weird with what you would call ketchup. So I started doing whatever was seasonal.

I started doing rhubarb ketchup. I started doing cantaloupe ketchup. I went from very old school and did mushroom ketchup. Started making my own steak sauce, which was kind of an interesting phenomenon.

Did that market for two years, did Christmas market, another Christmas market, a bunch of Christmas markets and things. We come home to Waterloo every once in a while and do little pop ups here and there. And I think actually the first place I ever sold it to the public was out of pop up at a camera with the name of the brewery. It was on Victoria Street near Lancaster.

No descendants. Yes. And I got invited by Ora from Ora Lot Pastries, who I knew back in the day and met Thompson from Woodboat Food at the out of market. That was kind of like the first one that I ever really sold anything at.

Came back home, did market for two years. And then in 2020, I was gearing up to maybe go part time at the market. It was getting a little hairy trying to come up with new shit every week because that's like I become known as this guy who just showed up with like those random flavor of ketchup that you had every week. I think my record, I had 15 different kinds at one market and doing weird Christmas flavors.

And it was fun. I'm not going to lie. And I still like, I still every once in a while drop of Christmas flavor just for like market season here. But I was going to go to part time and then the world shut down because it's 2020 now.

And I said, okay, what am I going to do? Well, obviously not going to do the way that the market was going to be set up was not to my liking and it was not beneficial for a producer like me, for sure. So I said, okay, I'm not going to do this market anymore. And I'm like, okay, well, now I need to start instead of taking a case of tomato ketchup to every business that I sell at because all the little ones were all just like one offs farmers market hand written label kind of style.

And so they need to get I need to get a core four and what were my popular ones make them all tomato based. So I kind of had a mother's sauce for all the other ones. And so as of 2020, I launched a big dilly style dill pickle ketchup, bring it on my spicy ketchup and curry gaburts, which is curry ketchup based off of curry worst in Germany. A couple years later, I attempted season mix.

I just recently decided to not serve do season mix anymore. It was a very hard sell. It was delicious. I was really proud of it.

And actually, if you go to dairy distillery in El Montonterio, makers of vodka, the dairy based vodka, the farmers markets here in town. Yeah, they use my catch up. They use my Cesar mix in their bar. And I think they're going to continue to do so in bulk, but they're interesting.

They were selling 95% of my Cesar mix. So I was like, it's not worth it for one business. Right. Came due to order more labels.

And I just went, no, that's $600. It's going to stay in my pocket. I guess the farmers markets, like that experience, obviously, it's a pretty random crowd that's coming through there. So getting people to taste it, like, was it going to be a pretty tough sell sometimes, though?

Like when someone's coming in in the early hours of the morning sometimes, how does that go? Well, you get the odd person that would say, you know, I just ate breakfast. No, thank you. You get other people that were like, oh, I love ketchup or you get the odd, I always would say there was always that parent that would go, oh, my kid drinks ketchup and I'm like, keep walking.

This is too expensive for you. But, you know, generally what I would do is I would just set up a little bowl of pretzels because generally ketchup served with salt, it was disposable. They could dunk the pretzel. They could, I would always, I always had my spiel.

You could try one that you think you're going to like, you could run the whole gauntlet, like go ahead, like try whatever you feel like, you know, maybe save the spice, you went for last. Every 10th person would come up and say, which one's your spiciest? Because they just assume I'm a hot spender. Because there was always, there was always.

You just see red spots right now. Yeah, exactly. I'm like, no, no, it's ketchup and they're like ketchup, really? But yeah, it was, it's actually an easier sell at the farmers market.

I'm revisiting the idea of doing more markets again next year because they need to taste it. And they need the guy hyped it up on the counter for them because generally my stuff was sell for maybe $13 a bottle in stores. And that's a pretty, it's a pretty happy price tag for something that you've never tried before. Especially something and it's going to be a little different.

Like, it's going to be a little thinner. It's going to be heavier on the tomato flavor because I don't really put anything in there to bind it. And I don't really put any water sugar in it. So it's just, it's very much tomato ketchup.

And that's how I sell it is it's tomato ketchup. So how do you get the consistency with the tomatoes? Like, do you have the same supply all the time? I do.

I use a can tomato number one. So that it's exactly the same in February as it is in July. Gotcha. Okay.

That's sort of the key on that one. For the little one offs, like where I would do like, cantaloupe or whatever, it would just be like, let's see if this works. Gotcha. I don't think I ever, I don't think I ever didn't serve one.

There were weird ones that I was, I'm never making that again. I had one that I made with a bunch of, I had done an event and I had all this like left over like cauliflower bits and pieces. Like we're talking like leaves and stems and I was like, I'm not sure I just do something with this. And I call the compost ketchup because it was all the stuff that would have gone into compost bin.

Yeah. And it tasted, it tasted kind of like sauerkraut. It was kind of fun. And I was like, just go home and pour it over your, pour it over your pork chop instead of apple sauce.

And people were like, oh yeah, I think I will do that. And I'm like, yeah, but I'm never making that again. It was just too weird. And do you also find the price a little prohibitive when you're trying to market it to a bar or restaurant?

A little bit, yes. Yeah. I just think with my fucking bar owner's brain, right? For sure.

Okay, now I got to mark this up and like, and then it's like, Yeah, are people going to pay a dollar for a cup of ketchup? But you guys, it's not something you can really give away. It's tricky. I know I had a real good client before the pandemic and I lost him immediately when the pandemic started.

And he never came back after he recovered, which is fine. I get it 100%. I'll get the odd business now kind of usually around Christmas time. It's like, we're going to be serving tortilla.

So we want, you know, we want a bucket of ketchup to serve with it. I'm a great, like, I don't have to put it in bottle or put a label on it. It saves me an awful lot of time. So and then that you can probably lower the price in that situation.

For sure. Right. So yeah, I can see doing that like a bucket of it because I think about it. It's like, if you're a nicer bar or restaurant, like we shouldn't be flipping the hinds and Frenchs all the time.

If you can get like sort of a craft catch of experience, just like any condiment you would get. It was kind of a fine line because any restaurant that would consider serving it would almost make their own. I know I had a good buddy of mine and he was my sous chef for a little while at the cat. And he started a artisan pasta business and he was really banking on restaurants buying his pasta and it just his pasta was impeccable.

Like he rolled it all by hand. So it was expensive and he was the best I've ever had. But I don't know if anyone's going to want to pay for this. Right.

Because they would throw. Yeah, exactly. You're better off trying to sell this yourself, like, you know, get a market stand or open a restaurant or start doing pop-ups and see what happens. And he did a bit of that and was somewhat successful with it for a bit.

But yeah, he still, you know, I still miss that pasta. And have you find like the ROI considering like the time that you have to put in making it and then you're out there at the markets, like putting in time plus you're also, you also generally have a full-time job as well. Right. So yeah.

How does that all work out for you? I'm not a production project for you, but like, how do you find? Because to me, I mean, it's like, I know, I'm a little bit of the gentleman I'm speaking to right now because I know you're very different than me, but I fucking hate the market. And like, so I can't imagine getting up that early and going and slapping my wares at a table.

Like, yeah, just how did you find that, bro? So like, do you find it worth it? It depends on the market for sure. At the time I was at a place called Car Farmers Market, which is, you know, just outside Ottawa.

I was probably about 25-minute drive for my house in the mornings. Big market, a lot of people come through, a lot of rural folks come through. And at the time there was this beautiful man named Enyo, he since passed away a couple of years ago after I left, but he would get there at 4 AM and set up all the tents around the old thing. And he kept that market going like a real tight ship.

Like, if you were late, you were screwed. Like, don't be driving your car through here, you know, trying to get to your stand. And he made it a very good experience. Again, it was much like, you know, we spoke of Paul.

He was tough, but he was, but he, you know, he had high expectations of the vendors at his market. And when I know now it's a much different experience out there and like, he's missed immensely. Again, then I would go do things like the Land's Down Farmers Market, which is a downtown market, completely different crowd, completely different setup. Nothing wrong with it.

Like, there was a little bit more, you know, do it yourself. But those Christmas markets there were just the amount of foot traffic that would come through. You get a, you get the Ottawa 67. We're playing right next door at 2 PM.

You get this influx of hockey traffic. You occasionally like the Red Blacks came back like the CFL team. That's a whole stadium pool of people. So, and that's a, that's an interesting piece too, because those are not farmer market folks.

Yeah, I was going to say, like, what's your demographic generally? You know, I still don't know sometimes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Generally people that want something a little different.

And there's a lot of those in Ottawa. There's a lot of those in Kitchener too. They want just a little something, you know, just not the same old same old. You know, I mean, people and they say, I don't even like catch them.

I'm like, yeah, but you got a bottle in your fridge, right? They're like, well, yeah. And I was like, well, then why don't you have a good one in there? Like they were like, yeah, why don't I have a good one in there?

You know, you get the odd, you can, that's why I was saying, like, sometimes just seeing it on the shelf is not enough. You need that guy standing there who's passionate about it, telling everybody what they should be eating. Yeah. And so that like in itself kind of puts a ceiling on the growth you could have, I would imagine.

And like, so obviously this is not your retirement plan. This is just something you're excited about doing. Like, I don't know anymore. I thought it was going to build, I was happy that it built slow.

Like, you know, that whole, we may not be big, but we're small kind of attitude, like from CBC Radio back in the day. But it's, I liked being little and I liked growing slow, but then it started hitting a point where it was like, oh, shit, I got to pay myself eventually, you know, shit, I got to like, you know, figure out, like, at some point I'm going to have to hire somebody because I'm a one man show still to this day. This is seven years and now it's like, it's tricky. You know, I have, I've been doing a part time job for about a year now.

Like I was trying to pay myself and then it just got, you know, the market went kind of bananas and a lot of places just were like, and I used to count on it. We're like, it sits on my shelf a little too long. I can't, I can't have that money just sitting there. I'm like, that's fair.

I can't argue with that. But so I just took a little step back and took a look at my family and stuff and went, uh, okay, I think I got to find a three day a week thing, still go make catch up one day, still do paperwork catch up one day and then just try and grab those markets whenever I can. I was, I was just in, I was just down in Kitchener on, I want to say the 8th of December at a market at Waterloo Brewing, in a little Christmas market. I was down there for that.

So I try to get back there every now and then. Yeah. And like, sorry for all these sort of technical business questions. I'm just very interested in how like, so you're kind of, have you found that like the issue with inflation, like that's affecting all of us, like it's certainly affecting my businesses.

People are going out like they used to, people haven't gone out like they used to since the lockdowns. So it's definitely affecting my bottom line for something like yours, which is like this awesome niche product, but it's like, your kind of, your target market is these sort of specialty grocery stores I would imagine for sure. Yeah. I'm getting into a story, not sounding at sobies.

No. And so like, has that affected inflation affected the sales as well? Because people just don't have the money to like, it's kind of an electric item. I don't know.

I'm an expensive. It is for sure. People like the markets are exactly the same. The ones that are buying correctly for me are exactly the same.

I will say that it's more the businesses are wary of bringing in anything new that they're not 100% sure about or maybe I didn't sell as well as they thought I was going to and it sat for a bit. And now they're like rethinking what they put on their shelves. There's been a lot, it's been a lot more from the vendor end than the customer end. I think people still want it.

It's just become a tougher sell again without me standing there. Like, this has become a big thing I've been thinking about a lot this, like, like the years over at a pretty solid Christmas season with a couple of markets that I did. I'm like, I think I need to revisit going back to market, at least one a month all summer. And that's an easy couple of hundred bucks.

But it's a lot of cash you come home with and a bunch of square sales and it feels kind of nice. Yeah. I don't have to worry so much if that cheese shop in wherever has decided not to carry me in. Yeah, they're not doing a reorder.

Yeah. And at the end of the day, you are the best to sell the thing that you're passionate about. Absolutely. Now that's the situation that could be an issue if you start growing is like finding the people, because I even find it at my own bars and restaurants.

I'm passionate about what I do at those bars and restaurants. But it doesn't mean the 20 year old I hired to work on Friday night. Right? For sure.

Yeah. So there's that thing. But then it also, like, you can't be everywhere at once. You can't, you can't conceivably grow at a massive rate just by yourself.

So it's a lot to think about. It really is. It's kind of exhausting. But like, I'm still people are saying, Oh, are you still doing the catch up thing?

And I've been somewhat quiet about it in my personal life and all my impersonal social media stuff. Like, you know, you see a bottle in the background here and there, but I don't run into people that maybe I used to do it was a hot sauce guy that I used to encounter at the markets a lot. And he ran into it and I hadn't seen him in a well over a year. He was you still doing the catch up like, yeah, I'm lost a little bit of my zip for it for a bit.

But I re-ignited it a bit this past year. It was kind of nice. I got out to a couple of, a couple of businesses that have been good to me for a long time and just did a little tasting event at their, like in their store and sold their stock off and then left them with, you know, a bunch of cases of catch up. And that always feels really nice and nice for them.

Yeah. And they can, they can promo me and I can promo them like, and leave it be. And, you know, I was in one of them that I did a December tasting at a couple of months, like last month. And I was just in there all the weekend and I saw the stock that I left and dwindled and I was really happy about that.

And so like, I'm going to give it another week and then kind of give them a nudge and say, yeah, I was in there, you know, you know, you want me to come do a top up. You want me to come do another tasting like it worked the last time. I mean, it was Christmas time when people were buying tortillas and they, you know, the freezer with tortillas was all but was right behind where I was set up. So it was very easy to go, oh, you're grabbing one of those.

You should grab one of these, you know, like just an interesting way to. Yeah, that's kind of like, I think your wheel out there is like exactly that is getting into those, like doing the markets, getting into those specialty stores and doing the tasting events. And then the problem is then you run the risk of spreading yourself a little too thin and you also have to provide for your family and it's a lot of, it's a lot of one, dude. It is.

It's, you know, again, it's still a labor love. And you know, if anybody's listening out there, like I'm happy to come and do a tasting at your shop or happy to, you know, come drop off a couple of gauges of the ketchup or, you know, like it's a fun reach out to me anytime. I'm down between here and Waterloo and anywhere in between. It's a regular route for me visiting my parents.

So, you know, I'm always happy to do the drop of the drop off. I'll generally be done by me. Like, that's great. Yeah, I think it's awesome.

And I'm like, I honestly, I'm very impressed with you keeping it going for this long. And like, I think it's a good thing to do. Like people don't, like you said, people don't even really think about doing craft ketchup and craft, like you get a lot of craft mustard and craft hot sauce. That was the early, that was the early selling point.

They were like, why ketchup? And I said, well, I went to the grocery store. There were 40 kinds of barbecue sauce, probably 10 kinds of mustard, both 30 kinds of hot sauce. And then they'd have Heinz, maybe French's, and either a budget brand or an organic brand, a grocery store.

I was like, what's there are only three bottles of ketchup? Like, there's a room right there. I could fit right in there. Like, my bottle's not too, not too big.

And I went retro and, you know, immediately, like, got the glass bottles. And you know, my, my label guy who I've known since I was in high school was just kind of like, oh, I think we should do black lids. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, white lids. Like, ketchup has a white lid.

Like, that is something that directly ripped off from, you know, Heinz for sure. Like, yeah, they don't do it anymore. Anyways, and now you kind of stay with it. Like, yeah, no, I think it's awesome.

I really do. And I'm, it's like, so, and what else do you have going on? Yeah, like you're, you just, you were working a butcher shop for a little bit. And now you're taking the step back from that.

Yeah, I'm just taking a, I'm taking a breather. I'm in between gigs at the moment. I have something lined up likely for February. And I'm pretty excited about it.

It's very, it's a very sideways move. I've always, my last job before I left Waterloo was at the Healthy Butcher. And I loved that gig. It was really fun.

And I've always got to put your shops have been kind of butcher shops and fine cheese shops have kind of been my bread and butter for the ketchup business. So I was working for a pretty cool company called Round the Block Butcher and Market. They started with them two Christmas to go now and just if they were closing up their shop and then they rebranded in the new year and opened this big shop. And it was just, it was getting a little intense.

It was getting a little whatever. And I was like, this is supposed to be my part time gig. And I'm losing sleep over, you know, kitchen stuff and it's not cool. And so I said, I'm going to take a step back for a little bit and see if I can find something a little bit more my speed.

You know, I'm getting older. Like, I'm not, I'm not dead yet, but I'm, you know, 48 years old now. So it's getting up there. We're all.

Yeah. But yeah, just, you know, this is all, this all just went down this week. So it's kind of just kind of nice to kind of take a break for a second and kind of rest my body. A backspin nightmare actually, just sitting here talking and nervously fidgeting and touching the last burn I got at the butcher shop.

And I'm like, yeah, you know, like still this day, like it never changes, right? You know, and keep you just leave it alone. It'll heal. That's not about.

Yeah. But yeah, I know, like keeping myself sane with hobbies and stuff and doing all kinds of fun stuff. And it's, you know, I don't want to be a great place to live and I'm pretty happier. So it's, you know, I just want to do like all the time.

I actually wanted to say I was down. It inadvertently, I was down for Christmas and had a sandwich in Babylon Sisters at the West Side. Oh, I thought Harper's Deli. Yeah.

Yeah. Fantastic. Just absolutely loved it. Okay.

Well, hopefully James was, if not, I'll let him know that you've said that. Because yeah, we're, he might be regrouping in a different location. We're not sure yet, but he's offered, he's offered January, he's gonna be back in February for sure. And yeah, if he's loud back in a calendar.

Yeah, fuck. I won't dig any deeper on that one. That's another thing we should mention Harper's Deli out of Babylon Sisters during the day. You should check out those sandwiches.

They're amazing. So I appreciate bringing it up. Thanks Dave. And yeah, thanks for doing this show man.

I'm like, honestly, that was a breeze of an interview because I'm super interested in everything you're doing there. And I think it's great that you kept it going for this long. So tell all our listeners how they can find out more about the Ketchup Project, where they can, where they can search for it. Well, ketchupproject.ca is a pretty easy way.

It's always a work in progress on that website. And I had, I had a store early on and I never really opened it. So if it says we're sold out of stuff, just reach out to me directly. And you can usually, I can usually guide you where you need to go to find it or get it to yourself, you know, Instagram at the Ketchup Project.

If you want my personal Instagram where I do a lot of food sheds, it's at Liverwurst provisions. I do this week in Food Every Thursday and it's my silly little hobby that I picked up during the pandemic where I just posted all my weekly food items that I cooked or ate in restaurants. Yeah, and I'd be remiss if I didn't say like one of my big things I would tell a young cook right now is find a hobby and it took me, you know, 46 years to find a hobby. I love, but I started doing improv and sketch comedy.

And it's a lot of fun. I'm in a couple of troops, notably indoor recess here in Ottawa and a group of duo that I have called Utility Enfield. You can find them at Instagram too. So I have a baseball thing to do with my friend Ali.

She's done a lot of help with the Ketchup Project with some cool label stuff for me. So I wanted to give her a shout out, you know, we're performing around Ottawa and we're, you know, if anybody from the improv community in Waterloo wants to book us, we're happy to come down there too. Well, that's good to hear. Awesome, Andy.

It sounds like you're for somebody who just kind of quit their job. You're busy as fuck. So, you know, you know, that in parenthood. Yeah, exactly.

Fun stuff. So yeah, yeah. Well, I'm happy for you man. It's great to catch up and I see what you did there.

Are you playing ketchup with me? Yeah, I like it. Yeah. But yeah, for real, I am super impressed that you've kept this going for this long and I wish you all the success.

I think it's a cool thing to do, especially for trying to do it all by yourself because I know from personal experience how difficult that stuff can be. It's tricky. Yeah. Well, good for you, man.

And all the best in this 2025, hopefully. Well, let's just say I hope that the Ketchup Project does exactly what you want it to do. Whatever that is. I will take that 1000%.

I will be back visiting a lot. I'll drop a bottle off. I want sisters. Make sure you get a little taste of it.

Yeah, man. I'm spreading the wind. Absolutely. Awesome.

Thanks again, Dave. Thank you very much. We'll see you soon.