A look at one of the environmentally friendly greenhouse facilities.--SUBMITTED PHOTO
While cucumbers, eggplants, lettuces peppers, and tomatoes are traditional greenhouse staples, sometimes changing and modernizing to comply with what the marketplace is demanding is important.
In other words, give customers what they want.
With that in mind, the Red Hat Cooperative, which has long been part of the southern Alberta greenhouse industry, has merged and adopted the Big Marble Farms brand. Officially it happened in the spring but has become more noticeable as 2020 comes to close, and will be more prevalent in 2021.
Ryan Cramer, president of Big Marble Farms, says it is more about rebranding as opposed to a company takeover.
“It is not really anything to do with deals or two companies coming together, it really is a rebranding for our produce in the marketplace,” Cramer explains. “Red Hat Coop has been in operation for 54 years and it is still a co-operative of growers working together with about 25 growers in the Medicine Hat and Redcliff area. We all work together and sell our produce together. For the last 54 years, we have sold it under the Red Hat Coop brand and this initiative is taking a fresh, new look at branding and taking a fresh approach with the Big Marble Farms brand. We made the decision in April 2020 to change the way we market our produce and the way it is branded.”
The new direction under the Big Marble Farms brand has made 2020 a transitional year in 2020, and Cramer expects to have the packaging switched over for the 2021 season. Cramer explains the fresh and greenhouse produce industry is competitive, with innovative and constant change.
The decision to switch was not taken lightly. It was all to do with making a decision on ensuring the viability of the food being produced and packaged. How was it being done and the best way to get more of it out there underlined the decision.
“All companies have to take a look at their branding every couple of years and the Red Hat Cooperative of growers has been very successful for 54 years and is a fantastic story. But, this was a way of remaining relevant I think in the marketplace,” explains Cramer. “I think we need to make sure we are fresh and relevant and that we are making these sort of changes. Not just for the branding but the way we grow. So over the last 10 years we are focusing on year-round product with the use of lights and being able to supply Canadians with a local option all 12 months of the year.
“This is something that has really been pushed hard in our industry and it is more and more becoming the norm in our industry to be able to produce all of the greenhouse veg, all 12 months of the year, which is just fantastic right?
“It gives Canadians that option and we recognize that early on. In Canada we are very competitive in that year-round space. So not unlike the branding message, the branding has to constantly evolve and adapt what is happening around us. And really this was our response to that. It was to take an already fantastic story, a 54 year-old story of growers working together, but we are still working together but we are just putting a new look on a new (way) and we are just putting a change of direction.”
One aspect they are proud of is their keen sense awareness in regards to the environment and growing, harvesting and packaging in such a way that they are not damaging the earth in any way. It was a critical consideration and a “huge piece to the whole change of direction.”
Cramer points to the water systems, the packaging which long since moved away from single use plastic and the non-use of pesticides. There is a reason why it is called Big Marble Farms.
“It comes right down to the name itself. Big Marble represents the planet earth. If you look at earth from space it looks like a big marble. So that was all part of the branding from day one, it was the sustainability on the list of marketing initiative,” states Cramer. “So we have actually taken the big marble parts name and we created our own separate little marketing strategy called ‘Big Marble First.’ So when we talk about ‘Big Marble First’ we talk about how any decision we are sure to put our planet the ‘Big Marble First’. So packaging, the way we grow, water conservation, keep conservation (at the forefront) eliminating pesticides with eliminating single use plastics, card boarding packaging options.
“It is noticed with every change that we make, specifically with plastic reduction because people can see that right in the grocery store when they pick up the produce. They can go look and find out more about who we are and what we are doing.”
There might be concern with the phasing out of the Red Hat Coop name on the product but Gillian Digman, Chief Operating Officer, is not concerned as the facility will still be Red Hat.
In peak season they have 160 employees serving the approximately 25 growers.
“The Red Hat facility will always be the Red Hat packing facility so we received all the grow product here, we grade it, package it and so it is business as usual here for us,” she notes. “We are continuing to do that so I see for the future that it will stay the Red Hat Coop. We are just real excited for the future. We have Marble Farms driving the marketing side of it and this new brand means so much to everyone in terms of all things such as sustainability and of the future really. We are just excited ,but we will stay the same and the brand will be Big Marble but we are all a part of the same family.
“It is like all the good pieces we have individually coming together to complete the puzzle. It has solidified everything.”
They are thinking ahead and they want to get bigger and be the major supplier of not only Alberta but of the three Prairie Provinces.
“Any market that wasn’t currently ours, that we weren’t supplying, we expect to work on,” says Cramer, who believes they will be able to find the workers they need moving forward. The goal is that they want to supply markets which have out of province produce to instead have Alberta-based veggies.
“We want to be the prairies’ greenhouse-grown produce supplier. We aren’t that right now. We are definitely in a big way, a big presence in Alberta but there’s still a lot of B.C. and Ontario product making its way into Alberta … we want that to be Alberta product, so with this new initiative, we see that being the reality the next few years and it is going to up the door for more expansion in the greenhouse industry.”
