Look out Sun-Rype, here comes Okanagan College’s Unusually Good Food Co.
A group of Okanagan College students have launched a project that echoes the creation of Sun-Rype in the valley back in 1946.
Both started with the idea of taking unmarketable apples and turning them into useful products.
For Sun-Rype that was making what became its signature brand Sun-Rype apple juice and apple sauce. It has since grown into the largest producer of apple juice in the country and still has a manufacturing plant in Kelowna.
For Unusually Good Food Co., it started in 2018 when an Okanagan College student wondered why there were so many apples left on trees after the harvest.
“She stopped at an orchard and knocked on a farmer’s door and started talking to him about it and found it was a pretty common issue,” Karsten Ensz, the current project manager for Unusually Good, told iNFOnews.ca. “She said there’s got to be a way we can put these apples to a better use. She started looking around and researching what we could do with them and she came in contact with the North Okanagan Gleaners Association.”
She learned they had dehydration equipment for turning vegetables into soup mixes that were shipped around the world. She negotiated time on the equipment, got grants to fund materials and arranged with a couple of farmers to have students pick unmarektable apples.
She’s no longer with Unusually Good because the company is a project of Enactus Okanagan College. She’s graduated and Ensz, who was a first year business student at the time, is now running the show.
That show started with the dehydration of chopped apples that were packaged and distributed for free to school lunch programs and marginalized groups throughout the Okanagan Valley, initially as Fruit Snaps before being rebranded as Unusually Good Apple Bites. Some hitched rides with the Gleaners and were shipped to those in need in other countries.
“A lot of the apples aren’t fit for the typical grocery store,” Ensz said. “If an apple is too small it’s deemed not good enough. Even if it’s too big or misshaped or the colour’s not right, there’s a lot of reasons not to accept apples. When that happens there’s usually a charge-back fee, and a composting fee and a disposing fee that these farmers get charged.
“If, at end of day, apples aren’t looking good, it’s not worth the farmer’s money to go and pick them when they’re just going to have to pay to get rid of them. But, if you leave apples on trees, it’s not good for the trees either. It damages the branches and it affects next year’s yields.”
Leaving them on the ground to rot doesn’t work either. Not only does that attract bears and other wildlife but the composting apples don’t put necessary nutrients back into the soil and actually create stale ground, Ensz explained.
He doesn't come from a farming background but has learned a lot by just asking questions of the two growers Unusually Good is currently working with.
He’s also become an experienced apple picker.
“It’s easy to pick the apples but it definitely wears you down doing it all day,” Ensz said. “It can get exhausting.”
Just working with the orchardists, and the 10 or so students involved in the project, has produced more than 100,000 packets of Unusually Good Apple Bites.
Last year, when the growers brought in portable equipment to turn some of their apples into cider, Ensz saw an opportunity to expand the operation by using the same equipment.
They produced 400 cartons of Unusually Good Cider last year, each containing five litres, that they promptly sold. This year production more than doubled to 900 units with many still to sell through 10 retail outlets in the Valley or online for delivery to Okanagan College sites.
"This is fresh pressed and there are no additives in it so it does have a unique flavour,” Ensz said. “We’re using apples that otherwise would have gone to waste so, with our products, we have the social cause of donating apple chips to people facing food insecurity. I think a lot of consumers get behind the message and the social and environmental benefits of it.”
Some of the money earned from the sales goes back into supplies and some goes to their farmers who have been giving away their apples for free.
The problem Unusually Good is facing is the growing interest from growers to have them pick their fruit but a limited supply of volunteer student labour.
“I’ve been talking with some different businesses in town over the past year, and we’re trying to organize a plan for the fall where businesses will come out and have their employees volunteer for a day so we can get a labour force going,” Ensz said.
Unusually Good has the capacity to produce more fruit and cider but doesn’t have the volunteer labour.
He’s also hearing from people wondering why this hasn’t been done before.
It was done before, by Sun-Rype, but there is a gap in the system where too many apples are still going to waste.
Ensz graduates this spring and is grooming his successor. He plans to stay involved with the project but is not yet ready to make the leap to taking it on as a career. Going large scale with paid labour changes the economics of the project but, it may still be viable.
In the meantime, he’s looking for work once school is over.
“I really like logistics and supply chain,” Ensz said. “It’s something I deal with regularly with this project and I really enjoy problem solving and looking at the data and making an informed decision.”
Also on the horizon is a regional competition against other Enactus teams as Okanagan College tries to advance to the nationals and, ideally, the global Enactus championships.
READ MORE: Okanagan's Unusually Good Apple Bites looking to be national snack champs
Okanagan College finished third in Canada last year highlighting all its student projects, including Unusually Good.
This year the focus will be on the apple bites and a program called Ivy Collective.
This is a new program that provides workshops to new immigrants on things like financial literacy, job skills and resume writing, Danielle Walker, president of Enactus Okanagan College, told iNFOnews.ca.
Zoom offerings of the workshop have already drawn participants from as far away as Toronto.
Another Enactus Okanagan College program, called Rising, created modules for schools on homelessness and empathy through education. It’s now working on modules for things like sustainable fashion and social media safety, Walker said.
Elevate is a partnership with the Ki-Low-Na Friendship Society and the college’s Aboriginal Student Centre to teach entrepreneurial skills to young Indigenous artists so they can learn how to market their art.
While they are not as economically successful as their flagship Unusually Good Food program, they do teach students practical skills.
“Enactus Okanagan College is a student-led organization, supported by the Okanagan College School of Business, that shapes student leaders to form connections, build confidence, and positively impact communities through social, economic, and environmental projects,” Walker explained.
“It’s experiential learning. You go to college and you go there for smaller class size. You go there for that experience. The Enactus program is just such a good fit for what students are looking for. The learning opportunities you get from this are really incredible. It’s really life changing.”
In high school, Ensz had a social conscience so did fundraising, food drives and donated to food banks.
“I’ve always had a passion for helping out community and social causes,” he said. “I didn’t realize Okanagan College had such a broad program through Enactus that had so many projects helping in different areas so, when I did find out about Enactus, I was really excited and jumped in feet first.”
Succession is also a key element of the program, which currently has about 58 students and nine faculty participating.
Both Walker and Ensz are grooming their successors who will determine whether programs like Unusually Good will continue to grow, be passed on to community partners or evolve in other ways.
READ MORE: Sun-Rype officially sold to Quebec company
Similarly, Sun-Rype evolved from a juice and apple sauce maker into a major producer of a variety of fruit juices and snacks. It was bought by Lassonde Industries Inc, a Canadian company, in 2020 for $89 million. Combined, they are largest fruit and snack maker in Canada and one of the the top two in the U.S.
Can Unusually Good Food Co. be far behind?
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