Heather Latter
A year-and-a-half after their unsuccessful quest for funding on CBC’s “Dragon’s Den,” Andrew Atwell and Ron Allen of Nigigoonsiminikaaning First Nation still are moving ahead with production of a wild rice popped cereal they invented.
“We’ve already got the cereal patented, of course, and now we’re launching a test market,” Atwell explained.
“We’ve targeted the Ottawa Valley market just to do this test market,” he noted.
“We’ve zeroed in on them and have 15 health food retailers lined up in writing—we’re just waiting for the cereal to be put on the shelf.
“And we’ll do some marketing in the local area,” Atwell added.
The pair, along with Atwell’s brother, Jess, from Ottawa, were able to get some funding for the 5,000 test market units.
“It’s going to be local labour manufacturing these 5,000 units,” Atwell said. “We’re doing it small scale, so it’s going to provide some very short-term manufacturing jobs.
“We’re going to use local Anishinaabe First Nations’ labour because we’re doing it here in the First Nation,” he stressed.
With the nutritional values assigned for the product and the design of the box intact, the only things left to do are some finalizations with the Food and Health Regulations and the company in Ottawa that is supplying the packaging.
Atwell said he hopes to get the test marketing underway by early February.
“Once the test market is accomplished and we can show how successful the cereal will be, what the consumer response is, then we go look at the partnerships and the funding sources that are available to us with that in hand,” he explained, conceding they need some fairly substantial capital money to produce the cereal in a factory setting.
“We’d need additional equipment,” Atwell said. “But other than that, we’re set.
“We’ve got the suppliers lined up for multi-year contracts,” he noted. “We haven’t sign yet and that was one of the biggest issues—supplying this cereal at a reasonable price with the raw product.”
The pair also have a name for their cereal: “Rainy River Cereal.”
“We chose the name for a couple of reasons,” Atwell remarked. “First of all because of the district, bringing something to the district and promoting the district, and also rice does grow in the Rainy River system.
“Anishinaabe people have been harvesting in the Rainy River water system for years.
“The other thing was the word association value. It may be minimal, but with the old ‘Red River Cereal’ doesn’t hurt,” he admitted.
“It’s a bit of marketing, but it’s also the intrinsic value of the district. We promote the district and we want the benefit to come to the district as much as we can,” Atwell stressed.
“So there’s a lot of inspiration in terms of creativity that comes from Rainy Lake and Rainy River because we believe there are powerful spirits that guide us, in some ways, through those waterways,” he added.
But their chosen name for the cereal caused some confusion locally last week after the Rainy River Federation of Agriculture received a registered letter from the Canadian Intellectual Property Office informing it of a cereal company wishing to register itself with this name.
Atwell’s father, who lives in southern Ontario, had applied for the trademark. So with the Toronto-area address on the application, the RRFA assumed a company from outside the district was attempting to “steal” their identity.
“Here’s somebody trying to horn in on one of the advantages we have,” RRFA president Rick Neilson had said initially.
“We’re taking the position that any product with Rainy River on the label should have at least something to do with the Rainy River District,” he had argued before learning Atwell is a district resident.
Once it discovered the cereal is locally-based, the RRFA said it wouldn’t be filing an opposition over the name.
In fact, they wished Atwell good luck.
“I think it’s great that they are going ahead with something like this,” Neilson remarked. “Wild rice comes from this region, so it’s good.
“It’s all about local food,” he stressed.
Neilson explained the RRFA trademark and logo were the result of strategic planning that was carried out in the early 1990s—and were registered to brand Rainy River agricultural products and put Rainy River District on the map.
“And we would certainly extend that to food products of the Rainy River District. That’s the idea behind it,” he noted.
Atwell said he’s glad to see the RRFA looking after the interests of the district.
“It’s all good in my view,” he remarked. “We’re all working toward the same thing—improve the economic base of the district.
“It’s not always our first agenda, but it’s always a consideration.”
And out of this confusion has come an evolving relationship, with Neilson inviting Atwell to attend a regional food conference in Thunder Bay in March.
Atwell certainly feels he and his partners have come a long way with their cereal since appearing on “Dragon’s Den” in 2008.
“It’s still as exciting as ever, but I’ve learned to be patient over time,” he admitted, noting he met with the “Dragons” (five successful business people who choose whether or not to invest in the various ideas presented to them) back on June 13, 2008.
“It was the last day of shooting,” Atwell recalled. “They were loving the cereal, however, they thought that the marketing of such a venture, if we weren’t going to adhere to another cereal company and just go on our own, the cost to get it off the ground is too much.
“We were better off to go to an existing cereal company and make our money that way.”
Atwell also felt the pair offered up a somewhat dry presentation after an elder who they had lined up to assist them wasn’t able to make it to Toronto.
Atwell and Allen had to improvise at the last minute, and Atwell thought their presentation wasn’t as solid as it could have been.
“There are all kinds of reasons, looking back, why it didn’t happen for us with the ‘Dragons’ but it was an awesome experience,” he enthused.
“We loved it and would recommend it.
“Even though we didn’t get funded, in hindsight we’re glad we didn’t because they would have owned half of whatever happens with this cereal forever.
“We probably wouldn’t have gone for the short gain on their usual terms, anyway,” Atwell added. “We didn’t have to give anything away for the sake of businessmen that want to make money.
“It’s more about creating jobs, bringing that resource back, and developing a value-added product from wild rice, which there aren’t too many around,” he stressed. “And it’s a huge resource to the native community overall.
“We’re really thrilled to be going through this experience and we’ll see what happens,” Atwell said.
