New Products and the CHFA Show!

Recently the Canadian Health Food Association (CHFA) held one of their two annual trade shows in Vancouver. Every year retailers of all types descend upon the show looking for new products to introduce to their customers. Green Earth Organics is no exception and we thought you might like to hear a little bit about how we go about finding new items to bring in.

Throughout the year we rely mostly on suggestions from you, as well as reaching out to companies whose products fill gaps in our offerings. Recently we filled one of those gaps in Vancouver by bringing in Gentle Earth, a Victoria based company, who has helped expand our selection with items like Sun Protection and a Recovery cream for tired and aching muscles. Just in time for summer!

CHFA West is the largest trade show in Western Canada for natural and organic products. It takes up the entire main floor of the Vancouver Convention Centre with a whopping 65,000 square feet of manufacturers, distributors, and brokers. As a lark, I turned on my running app and set it to record my walk throughout the show. We spent 4 ½ hours and walked over 23 kilometers. Note to self: next time wear my good running shoes. A full two aisles of the show were set aside as completely organic products and other companies with both organic and non-organic products were scattered among the exhibitors every where else.

Our first stop was Westpoint Naturals where we were thrilled to discover a new organic corn starch in their trademark resealable bags. Later in the day we also found kelp noodles, which are an awesome gluten-free noodle that look similar to vermicelli. They don’t require any cooking, so they work great in salad, stir-fry, soup, and veggie dishes. Seaweed/kelp products are definitely one of the biggest trends in organic right now.

Gimme Organic, they make roasted seaweed snacks in both regular sea salt and sesame flavours, had a new item. Resealable mini packs of seaweed crumbles in a honey Dijon flavour that are meant to go on salads or be eaten as a snack. They brought a ton to pass out and let people try, so since it was getting close to the end of the day, they happily handed over an entire box to me when I asked to try some. One less thing for them to take home, but I looked pretty silly lugging a box under my arm for the rest of the show.

As a request from one of our Vancouver customers we also were also on the lookout for some black rice and discovered Lotus Foods, who have a whole line of different rice grains and rice noodles. I’d love to try and see if the Lotus Forbidden black rice works for making sushi. It always looks so neat when I see the black rice sushi in restaurants. Also, good news for fans of alternative milk and So Nice (known for their soy milk), they have just introduced a brand new organic Almond Milk. We tried it at the show and absolutely loved it. It won’t even be hitting the market until next month, so let us know if you’re interested!

There were so many new products I'd never have enough room to list them all, but keep checking our products as over the next couple months we have some exciting items coming.