The Current - A new, and award-winning, Chapman flavour: Sweetgrass

Episode Date: October 23, 2025

 Chapman's ice cream tied for first place for most innovative at the International Ice Cream Consortium with a new, unique flavour: Sweetgrass. Developed with the help of Chef Zach Keeshig, his Indigenous roots created the vanilla, almond, cinnamon-y taste of the Canadian ice cream. But during this time, Canada's economy faces a wave of uncertainty with on-going trade talks with the US. Despite that, Chapman has announced a 200 million dollar expansion. The Canadian born and loved ice cream brand has plans to go international — and this award helps.

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Donate at lovescarbro.cairbo. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. Well, you know, we always hear about Chinese food, we hear about French food, Italian food. But, you know, my life's work has been to try to get, you know, indigenous cuisine on the mainstream of Canada and be a household name with everybody else. That is chef Zach Kijig. He is the chef and owner of Na Agan Restaurant in Owensound, Ontario.

And as you heard, he wants to put indigenous food. food and ingredients on the map. Well, he's doing that. He's now won an international award for that. Chef Kijig collaborated with the Canadian company Chapman's to create a new sweet grass-flavored ice cream tied for first place for most innovative ice cream at the International Ice Cream Consortium in Greece. Chef Zach Kijig is with us this morning alongside Ashley Chapman, the C-O-O-O- of Chapman's ice cream. Good morning to you both. Good morning. Thank you very much for having us. Thanks for being here. Zach, congratulations. I appreciate that. Thank you.

Just start with the basics. Sweetgrass ice cream. For people who don't know, what is sweet grass? So sweetgrass has been used quite significantly in our culture. It is like a wild grass that grows. You know, normally it's used and dried for ceremonial purposes or used, you know, for regalia. It can be used for, you know, basket making and things like that. But here, what we wanted to do is in our restaurant, you know,

we wanted to try to get rid of using early settler kind of ingredients. And we ended up finding that sweetgrass has almost a beautiful vanilla sort of almond, marzipan-type flavor that works very well as a substitute. It might actually work well with ice cream as well. Yes, sir. So we've been making ice cream in our restaurant for a few years now. And it was great to be able to showcase it on the international stage. Can you pick up a little bit on what we heard at the beginning that you want to make sure you said people you know everyone knows chinese food they know uh indian food they know

korean food you want to put these ingredients in the mainstream why is that important to you well you know um back when i started doing this sort of stuff there was no indigenous chefs there was no representation of indigenous people and we've been very very fortunate uh with the restaurant that we that we have we've been pushing the boundaries you know on what indigenous food could be you know as i said if i went on the street and i was asking people you know what do you think indigenous food is and a lot of people would say, you know, squash and maybe three sisters or something like that, but I feel like we can push the boundary and it can be even more than that now. Who's to say that we can't grow fresh sweet grass and make it into an ice cream and that

be indigenous? And as I was saying, you know, we, oh, sorry, go ahead. No, no, going to. Keep going. But we always hear about, you know, Chinese food, French food, Italian food. But I feel like indigenous food should have its moment on there in the same conversation. And that being, almost a household name where people, instead of tonight, let's go out for Italian food, we're going to go out for indigenous food and try it. I was going to say, does winning this award give you kind of fuel in the tank for that? Do you feel like that's a step towards what you're trying to achieve? Well, I feel like, you know, this has been my life's work already with the restaurant.

We've been very fortunate to, you know, have other accolades and be able to showcase this stuff on TV. But this is just a, you know, another step. and, you know, hopefully putting indigenous products and things like that into a grocery store. You know, I'm a big believer. We never see any, you know, indigenous products in a grocery store or anything like that. We always see, you know, Chinese products, Indian products, but when is there ever going to be, you know, a product made by us for us in sort of in a grocery store setting? Or, you know, in something like this and winning the award, hopefully it inspires the next generation of people. to pursue being able to, you know, have indigenous products on the mainstream.

That's fantastic. Ashley, how did this collaboration come to pass? It was just, it was a whirlwind. I've known Zach for a while, and he's got a great reputation in the area. He's a passionate chef, and I brought him to the head office here. Just to have a chat about what could we do? And Zach posted a very innocent, had a great meeting at Chapman's, and boom, it blew up across the media that Chapman's was doing something with an indigenous chef. So we kind of fell into this and yeah, it's been fun.

It's been great. When you first tasted the sweet grass ice cream, what did you make of it? I was relieved. And I was relieved because we kind of, we decided to do this. thing, but we really didn't know how it was going to translate into a real ice cream. So when we made the first batch and we're sitting around tasting it and we're like, wow, this is great. But the thing about this award is taste is subjective. So, you know, I think Zach and I both were thinking, you know, is it, is it just us who likes this? You know, have we, you know,

influenced by our passion for what we do, what other people think as far as the taste. And this kind of for us, it just proves that it doesn't matter where you are in the world. This is an impressive collaboration and an impressive flavor profile. I mean, Chapman's is a great Canadian story, right? Your company just put in $200 million into the expansion of a third plant. 27 million of that comes as a loan from the Ontario government. Tell me about the business and why you're building now. Well, the business is booming, and we see the demand for Canadian products is just increasing.

We fight against the big boys, the sharks, as we call them, the unilevers, the Nestleys of the world. And we've just gotten to the point where the consumer loyalty is getting stronger every single day. So, yeah, my parents who started in 1973 with six employees and the two of them, and, you know, four of those employees quit within the first week. So now we're building on this, and I would see in a couple of years, we're going to be 1,300, 1,300 employees here in small town, Markdale. Can you just talk, I mean, I'm from Gray County. I spend a lot of time in Markdale these days. What that investment means for the local economy? You have transformed that community in many ways and are an anchor in the community.

Oh, absolutely. And we're very proud of what we do and we're very proud of our community. Going back to our fire when we burnt down in 2009, we literally had lineups of people from Markdale around the factory, trying to get our attention to say, give me a shovel, you know, give me a bucket and water and I'll clean something. Let us do something for you for once. So we love our community and we support local as much as we can. And that translates for this entire area, to be honest. You're from Kimberly.

You spend some time there. Zach's up and Owen Sound. And we like to support our local community because that's just really what you should do. It's the right thing to do. I mean, the legendary story, of course, is when the plant burned down, you paid everybody. You kept your employees employed while there was no work for. them to do. You're in this economy that everybody's in right now, where we're being

buffeted, clobbered, whatever word you want to use with what's going on in the United States. How have you been hit by tariffs? Well, the tariffs have not been kind to us, but at the same time when the retaliatory tariffs did drop, certainly that helped a lot. For us, it's just, well, no, for every business in Canada, it's the uncertainty. that's killing us. But we decided to put our head down and we said,

you know what, now is the time to invest more in Canada, not less. We need to set the stage for other Canadian businesses that, you know, it's time. Do what you can, invest in Canadian,

and the results will be great. And you're seeing it pay off? Absolutely. Our sales, ever since we made our statement in March that we were going to suck up the tariffs have gone crazy, a little too crazy. My production people aren't exactly as happy. They've asked me for two weeks notice before I say anything online.

So I didn't tell them about this interview, so that might be a problem, and I'm going to get yelled at later. But yeah, it's a scary time to be in business, but the same time we have to be brave, and we have to put our heads down, we have to go forward. Zach, being brave is kind of what you're doing as well. Tell me a little bit about, I mean, sweetgrass is, you know, the root in this ice cream. But what else do you want to do?

What are the indigenous flavors and ingredients that you want to see on the grocery store shelves? Well, you know, we've been very, very lucky in our restaurant to do. I think we're showcasing, you know, what indigenous food is on the next level sort of thing. But I don't think it starts at the grocery stores. I think it starts by educating people. on sort of the base level by going to places like mine or we don't do just, you know, restaurants sort of stuff. We do education in classrooms and things like that.

And that's where I think it really needs to start is in places like this to educate people about, you know, indigenous culture and indigenous food. I remember when I was in school, you know, I learned very, very little about my culture and what was going on in Canada and in food and, you know, about tradition and things like that. So I think it really needs to start on that sort of level. where people are first getting introduced to indigenous food and culture.

And I think, you know, the sweetgrass ice cream is something familiar, but it pushes the boundaries a little bit on, you know, what a traditional ice cream is, but also educates people, you know, a little bit about indigenous culture and, you know, the history of sweetgrass. And your restaurant's been really successful. I mean, the word is appetite. There's an appetite for this, you think, broadly? Yes, I've been very, very lucky, you know, just this past year,

I won number nine, best new restaurant in Canada. on Canada's from her best list. I got number 92 overall. And then, you know, I've been very, very fortunate to win some other awards and be on TV speaking the word and spreading the word about indigenous culture. So there's a big one for it, you know what I mean? And I think people, now is the time that people are wanting to learn and educate themselves about indigenous culture.

That's fantastic. Ashley, am I going to be able to buy a pint of sweetgrass ice cream next time I head to the grocery store or is it a time in future? Well, it's funny, Zach and I have talked about this, and we're thinking about getting a local Canadian flavor house that I work with on other things to start looking about how we could take the fresh sweet grass and turn it into something like, an example would be vanilla, right? Vanilla goes into an alcohol solution, and that's what makes vanilla extract. So perhaps we can figure out how to do this on a bigger scale. certainly there's no infrastructure for it now, and we wouldn't have to build that with indigenous communities to harvest the sweetgrass, to make an extract.

So it's not, it's not going to be there next week, Matt. But my ice cream habit will live for a long time. So maybe in future I'll be able to get it down the road. Yeah, we will, at Chapman's will fill in the gap until Zach and I figure it's going to have. This is a great story, a great story about collaboration and the two of you working together to make something interesting. Thank you both for being here. Thank you, Matt. Thank you very much. We appreciate it.

Chef Zach Kijig is the owner of Naagen Restaurant in Owensound, Ontario, Ashley Chapman, the C.O. of Chapman's ice cream. They recently tied for most innovative ice cream at the International Ice Cream Consortium for their Sweetgrass Ice Cream. This has been the current podcast. You can hear our show Monday to Friday on CBC Radio 1 at 8.30 a.m. at all time zones. You can also listen online at cbc.ca.ca slash the current or on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca slash podcasts.