What started with a family recipe for barbecue sauce is becoming a global venture.
Cattleboyz Gourmet Barbecue Sauces is making its first forays into overseas markets after the Okotoks-area business recently got the first bottles of its popular sauce on the shelves at all 25 Costco locations in Japan last month.
Sending the first shipment of 24,000 bottles across the Pacific Ocean is a step to eventually exporting to other countries.
“It takes our brand outside the boundaries of North America,” said Kent Patel, VP of market development. “It’s a great honour to get into Japan because it is so hard.”
All four of the Cattleboyz sauces are now on the shelves at all 25 Costco locations in Japan. The first two shipping containers with a total of 24,000 bottles in 40 pallets left Canada this spring. A second shipment of 24,000 bottles will be sent later this summer and additional shipments will occur year-round if sales are positive.
Cattleboyz has been carried in Canadian Costco stores for 15 years and has been sold outside Canada’s borders for several years, in Safeway and other locations in the U.S. It was also sold in Mexico at one point.
Patel said Japan is a huge new market and a good place to do business. If successful, he said business relationships can stretch on for long periods, buyers are willing to pay in advance and they take a collaborative approach.
“If they like you and you do well there, you’re like family,” said Patel.
It was a long, exhaustive process that took 15 months to get the product on the shelves in Japan. Patel said there are high standards to meet, from product packaging to ingredients to food safety.
“They set a very high bar for point of entry, they expect high quality, it has to look great, it has to taste great,” he said.
Cattleboyz had to meet the country’s stringent regulations for genetically modified ingredients. Cattleboyz had to find GMO-free starch and caramel colour to meet Japanese regulations.
Cattleboyz is now exploring other internaional opportunities.
The company is exploring exporting to India, the United Kingdom and it’s talking with a Calgary company that distributes into Korea, China and some Middle Eastern countries. And, it is taking another look at Mexico.
“I think we’ll be moving into buy-sell agreements with India, the UK, Korea, we’ll do a lot more international and hopefully we can expand our Canadian sales,” said Tamara Ternes, president and owner.
It’s a long way from the business’s humble roots.
The company was founded 18 years ago by Tamara’s husband Joe Ternes. Joe Passed away earlier this year and Tamara took over the business.
“I think [Joe] would be very impressed with the way that the company is going,” she said.
The international move is taking the business to a whole new level, but they aren’t looking at any major expansion plans for the day-to-day work running the business. Cattleboyz is currently based out of a second-floor office above a garage just north of Okotoks. They will stay put for now, said Tamara.
“It’s a business above the shop,” said Tamara. “I think Kent and I will be able to handle it just fine where we’re located at the moment. Eventually if we need to expand and hire more people, we’ll look at it then.”
Kent said it will be important for the company to manage its growth in the years to come as it expands sales to other international markets.
“As any company grows it has to be scalable growth,” he said. “You don’t want to grow too quick and implode. It has to be manageable.”
Kent said their experience is a lesson for other small businesses about the opportunities to be found in a global market.
“Why knock your head against a wall trying to get into a market that’s saturated here when there’s other markets overseas,” he said. “For an Alberta company or any Canadian company, if you have a quality product, a premium product you could do well in a foreign market.”
He said some of the most important assistance along the way came from trade officials with the provincial government. Patel said he was able to get a connection with the general manager of Costco in Japan through officials at the provincial agriculture and forestry department and the province’s international trade offices have been a big help with further expansion plans.
