Canadian manufacturers spice up the F&B industry

Heat is trending from mild to ghost pepper hot. What is changing in the Canadian food industry is the complexity of heat-flavoured products. New items are continually developing to satisfy the Canadian consumer’s curious palate.

Sriracha is leading the charge. According to statistics from Kerry Group, 20 million bottles of Sriracha were sold globally. By 2023, that number had doubled to 40 million.

“Heat lends itself to a lot of experiential flavours, like sensory. You’re engaging sensory notes for consumers in many different products,” says Soumya Nair, global consumer research and insights director at Kerry. “Heat has always been there, but lately, it has taken more meaning for consumers, such as adventure and tasting the provenance of the spice. It’s not just chilli, or it’s not just chilli with sweet, chilli with savoury; it is chilli from a specific part of the world, a specific country. It’s travel through your taste buds. Heat has some shock value that lends itself to categories like sweet. Chilli doesn’t mean just chilli anymore. Chilli does bring in a lot more of that drama and adventure travelling through your taste buds.”

Kerry Taste Charts for 2024 outline the rising spices and interesting new heat flavours. Specific to Canada, chilli pepper has become mainstream in the past five years, along with smoked flavour and black pepper. Additional essential flavours include curry, chipotle chilli, and jalapeño chilli. Some of the fastest-growing flavours in the last three years include peri-peri, smoked paprika, smoky barbecue, Korean barbecue, spicy buffalo, sweet chilli, Indian tikka masala, habanero chilli, and Jamaican jerk. The fastest growing in the last year are increasingly complex flavours, like Sichuan chilli, turmeric, adobo, Nashville heat, pepper lemon, chimichurri, hot honey, gochujang, and mole poblano.

What demographics are driving growth in hot and spicy food profiles? “Historically, we would have said younger people are more accepting of heat, but we’ve been saying younger people are more accepting for a decade. Those young people have become older, so the hot and spicy lovers are now more experienced,” says Nair. “Boomers in the older demographic, empty-nesters, recent empty-nesters, are also open to exploring flavours. They’re the ones who typically have the disposable income to travel around the world and be exposed to so many cultures and flavours. They’re much more ready to try those spices and heat when they return home.”

Firebelly Tea offers a fennel tea with anise and chilli. Photo © Firebelly Tea

New products

The spread category is enlivened with heat, especially honey, but what about various kinds of nut butter? Dumornay Delis (dD), the Montreal-based company owned by Jason Delis and Stanley Dumornay, entered the hot-spread market with their Manba line of peanut butter after the pair travelled to Haiti for volunteer humanitarian work. The Haitian-inspired peanut butter is made from ground, roasted peanuts. The peanut butter has a hot pepper kick from Scotch Bonnet pepper.

“Manba is a natural peanut butter that’s very creamy and can be drizzled on granola or ice cream, whereas hydrogenated peanut butter has to be scooped out of the jar,” Delis explains while sharing its use beyond bread.

Boccalino began as a restaurant in Canmore, Alta., until patrons started purchasing bottles of the house Caesar and Swiss dressings faster than the team could produce. The restaurant closed, and Boccalino Fine Foods began.

“The Chipotle Caesar is our Classic Caesar recipe turned up a notch with a slightly smoky and spicy addition of chipotle pepper and spices,” says Jamie Ayles, company owner and chef. “The Mango Jalapeno marries zesty, spicy, sour, sweet, and hot to compliment fresh and crisp produce or seafood.”

Snack company NaturSource has created a spicy version of kettle-cooked praline almonds with cayenne and habanero pepper. Photo © NaturSource

Over at NaturSource, based in St. Laurent, Que., the company’s Siracha-inspired Salad Topper Sriracha Crunch is made with dry-roasted nuts and seeds. These include almonds, pecans, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, wheat noodles, and a spice blend with a little cane sugar for sweetness.

“Sometimes even the most delicious ingredients need that extra heat,” says Mitch Oberfield, executive vice president. “Don’t limit yourself to salads: snack straight out of the bag, add it to your next wrap or sprinkle on top of staples like rice and quinoa to turn ordinary into extraordinary.”

The brand recently launched Hot Maple Almonds.

“As snacking innovators, we challenged ourselves to put a NaturSource twist on your pantry staple,” says Oberfield.

The kettle-cooked praline almonds are a protein-rich snack given a spicy kick with the addition of cayenne and habanero pepper.

Two teas, Zest for Life and Internal Combustion, from Firebelly Tea, follow the trend for heat. Founded by David Segal, who co-founded DavidsTea and Shopify president Harvey Finkelstein, the Ottawa-based Firebelly Tea is on a mission to create “premium loose-leaf tea with real flavours and real ingredients from the finest global suppliers.” The company launched in 2022 after spending 18 months developing its range of over 20 teas.

“Zest for Life is a lemon ginger green tea with chilli spice. It packs some serious heat! We made this tea for spice lovers, and each ingredient has strong health benefits,” explains Segal. “Internal Combustion is a fennel tea with a sweet and spicy balance of anise and chilli.”

For sweet heat, Hummingbird, a pure craft bean-to-bar chocolate manufacturing company in Almonte, Ont., produces a bar called Mayan. The 68 per cent single-origin dark chocolate bar has a blend of spices for a subtle heat, including cinnamon, nutmeg, and chilli.

“We craft our chocolate from sustainably sourced cacao beans in our factory rather than purchasing bulk chocolate. Our single-origin bars have just three ingredients and highlight the natural flavours and terroir of each origin,” says co-owner Erica Gilmour. “We created our Mayan spice bar to honour the origins of cacao and chocolate. This recipe includes some of the traditional spices added to the cacao drink made by the Maya people of Central America.”

The Canadian consumer demands new tastes with complex flavours and various heat levels. Brands continue to offer innovative new food and beverage products to meet this demand.