Transcription of Nourishing Lives with Climate-Positive Seaweed Delights:

Alissa Miky: Hello everybody. Thank you so much for listening to the Marine Plant-based goal. I’m super happy to introduce one of the wonderful entrepreneurs, so please introduce a little bit of it to yourself first.

Desiree Dupuis: Hi Alissa. Thank you so much for having me. I’m from Marine Plant University. I am coming from Vancouver, Canada, and my name is Desiree Dupuis.

Desiree Dupuis: I am the founder of a seaweed consumer seaweed brand called Cove with a k k o v E. And so with Cove, we are developing the tastiest most delicious snacks that we can made from the world’s most sustainable crop seaweed. Beautiful.

Alissa Miky: Please explain more details about why you start this business.

Alissa Miky: Did you have any background to start the seaweed company or what, what, what was your back backstory? 

Desiree Dupuis:  Cove was developed as the consumer brand for a Vancouver Island based company called Cascadia Seaweed. And so the, the founder at Cascadia Seaweed, bill Collins had been doing an economic study on the island of, of like the city of Victoria on Vancouver Island.

Desiree Dupuis: And throughout his, his kind of research and development realized how big of an opportunity Vancouver Island had to get into the seaweed industry. All of the benefits as we know environmentally of, of planting and growing seaweed, the nutritional benefits, and so on and so on. And so he and two other men founded Cascadia Seaweed in 2019.

Desiree Dupuis: And after, you know, a few months of, of developing the company, investing in, in planting seaweed and building seaweed farms with indigenous first nations, kind of realized that the best, you know, the best way the, the, the highest, most valuable usage of the sea. Seaweed that they were planting and growing around.

Desiree Dupuis: Vancouver Island would be a consumer food brand. And so my background, I’m vegan, plant-based, ultra sustainable. I love the planet. I’m involved in things that are not only cruelty-free from an animal perspective, but also benefit the earth. And I’m a marketing and branding person. And so when they were moving forward to launch a consumer food brand, I was invited to join Cascadia Seaweed as the VP of sales and marketing, and as a founding partner.

Desiree Dupuis: To launch the food brand, which ultimately became Cove over the two years, two and a half years that I was a part of Cascadia Seaweed, because it’s a startup investor funded company. Investors wanted to go in a different direction in terms of the verticals for, for the company with Cascadia Seaweed.

Desiree Dupuis: And so we have essentially spun off Cove as its own. Incorporation and I took over full ownership of the brand. And so now it’s just myself and I brought in some new partners to, to develop our, our, our food products and to really focus on just the consumer part of being a C P G food brand.

Alissa Miky: Beautiful. Was it a pain painful to like, you know, separation? 

Desiree Dupuis: No, there were some painful moments because we weren’t sure what the future would hold for Covid. Sure. And it was such in it, it was still in its infancy, but we were, I. Gaining so much momentum that we didn’t just wanna like let it die, so to speak.

Desiree Dupuis: And so luckily yeah, I was able to, to make a, a fair deal with the other founding partners of Cascadia and it benefited both of us and also bring in new partners that were really excited about what the brand was doing and where we can go and the opportunity because in Canada you know, I, I was reading through your, your website and I know that you’ve, you know, you’ve, you’ve acknowledged all of the different countries that are, you know, familiar with seaweed and already using seaweed.

Desiree Dupuis: And an emerging market is in Canada. And a lot of the, the Canadian grocery stores and retailers in, in food, and especially in the natural food space, are extremely interested in seaweed and consumer food, food products, especially, you know, there’s also a movement towards local as well. And so, There’s things that are really missing in the Canadian grocery market in terms of natural foods.

Desiree Dupuis: One obviously being seaweed snacks, but two being locally grown seaweed snacks. There are just, are not any, we’re the only brand really. And so yeah, I was lucky to find partners that really saw, that already had been working in the food space, in the natural food space with some pretty big. Big brands and wanted to get involved with a brand that would be, that is really, you know, positive for the environment and everything that we know about seaweed.

Desiree Dupuis: And so, yeah it was a bit painful, but we made it to a really good place.

Alissa Miky: Well, congratulations and please tell me about your product. So I already checked your Instagram, which is so beautiful. You, I love the branding. It’s clean, simple, but I, I could feel the happiness through there. But please tell me about your product to the

Desiree Dupuis: audience.

Desiree Dupuis: Yeah, so right now we’re in two categories. The, the first one, which we like to say is like the lowest hanging fruit, because for us, as I mentioned in Canada, we don’t have the, the manufacturing, we don’t have the seaweed industry set up. And so we developed our first line of products, which is our signature seaweed seasoning.

Desiree Dupuis: So it’s just made with, with dried seaweed. We, we were using sugar kelp and aria as the two marine plants. This, the seaweed plants that, that were being grown on Vancouver Island. And so our original, we have three flavors of our signature seaweed seasoning, which is our Sea spice original, which kind of mimics the everything bagel spice.

Desiree Dupuis: It’s garlicy, it’s got that umami flavor Yu so on avocado, toast and salads. Oh my gosh. People love it on popcorn, which we like really? Oh. Hit on the mark ’cause it has that. Oh my saltiness. Love it. Yeah. And then we also have two other flavors of our seaweed seasoning. It comes in lemon, which is fabulous on anything you wanna do.

Desiree Dupuis: Greek like lemon style Greek potatoes, a tofu marinade, even a nice salad with olive oil. And then sriracha, which obviously spices everything up and sriracha is so good. So those are our three flavors of our sea spice, our signature seaweed seasoning. And then we’ve entered into the snack market with our protein puffs.

Desiree Dupuis: So our protein puffs, our goal with, with our, our food products. Because it is food, it’s natural food. Seaweed is naturally healthy, naturally vegan. We don’t wanna screw it up by adding a bunch of crap to it. And so we’ve really tried to take a clean approach to the snacks. And so we’ve focused on protein because as we know well, maybe not the listeners don’t know, but I’m sure you know in your team that.

Desiree Dupuis: Seaweed is actually naturally very high and significant in protein. And so we really wanted to leverage that. And in North America, people are still really like focused on, on protein and also, especially with plant foods, trying to figure out how they can get as much protein as possible. And so, yeah, for a hundred gram bag of our.

Desiree Dupuis: Protein puffs, you’ll get up to 18 grams of, of protein. Wow. So up to 18% with less than four grams of sugar in, in an entire bag. And so we feature our protein puffs. It’s just seaweed powder with pea protein, and they come in four flavors. Our most popular, of course, is the umami butter and that we have a barbecue with cheddar and a kelp and vinegar as well.

Desiree Dupuis: So, Beautiful.

Alissa Miky: Yeah. So tell me about you. What, what was your difficulty to, you know, to start the new product? Because most of the T P Z, you know, the people who don’t work in the C P D industrial, people think that, oh, just making one recipe. They can like, you know, tweak into the musk production system. But of course it’s not, as you see, there’s tons of difficulty, tons of headaches.

Alissa Miky: Right. What was your most headache, and then how did you achieve it?

Desiree Dupuis: Oh my gosh. Yeah, I, I think that’s why the investors kind of like no longer wanted to fund the consumer consumer brand year year, because it took us two years. I mean, I, I don’t think consumers understand everything from shelf life stability.

Desiree Dupuis: You know, we really want to do like a fresh salad logistics. The logistics, the renting, the, the scaling up. Like it’s very easy to make, you know, a seaweed salad for a hundred people. But if you wanna make a seaweed salad for a million people and, and sell it across Canada, it’s a whole nother story in terms of the production and of course the shelf stability, the shelf stability.

Desiree Dupuis: So being a new brand, we didn’t know the how fast the product would move and then. If it would be perishable before people could actually enjoy it. And so the, the, the, we, we, we kind of moved away from fresh right away, just understanding all the challenges that we would encounter as a new brand, trying to come up with a, a fresh product.

Desiree Dupuis: And of course, the distribution and the logistics and all the behind the scenes too that most consumers don’t understand, you know, like how it doesn’t, you know, Yeah, get into the, the, the, the, the cooler section in your local grocery store. How many hands it has to touch before it actually gets there.

Desiree Dupuis: And so yeah. And the other thing that we really, really wanted because they’re, again, that was coming like with the low hanging fruit and knowing that we could do something because in Canada want the one snack that people are consuming like crazy, especially kids, is the, the seaweed snacks, the little sheets.

Desiree Dupuis: So you can get the night. Yeah.

Alissa Miky: I was so surprised with that because when I was kids in, in the states, when I eat the seaweed, you know, the, the snacks people were so surprised at me because people said that I’m Ali’s eating the black paper, you know? But now, oh yeah, people are just bringing the snacks.

Alissa Miky: Well, well the dinner food, we just. I was so surprised with that.

Desiree Dupuis: It’s a great snack and people go bananas for it, and they’re really consuming it. Costco has its own version, you know? Oh, yes. And there’s a few different brands, but we knew we would have a winner because people want local. All the, all of that seaweed is coming from Asia.

Desiree Dupuis: And also the packaging is a big problem because it’s plastic on plastic on plastic. And so, We really wanted to develop the, the seaweed snacks, but we just literally, we didn’t have the, the manufacturing industry in Canada, as you have, as you know, in, in Asia. And so we would’ve ended up having to ship our seaweed over to China or Korea, get it made into, you know, the ink and the pulp that it’s made into to make those seaweed sheets and then, Brought back over here and trying to be, you know, sustainability is one of our, you know, number one pillars.

Desiree Dupuis: And so it just didn’t make sense. And so it was pivot upon, pivot upon pivot, working with different food scientists executive chefs that also I. Again, with North America, especially like West Coast Vancouver it’s, it’s not a popular ingredient. There’s not a lot of experience. Even the food scientists we work with, you know, developing we also looked at doing a seaweed jerky, but the best way to get the texture for the jerky would, would be to use kind of like a soy based.

Desiree Dupuis: You know I hear you. So a, a base and so it all, it, then it was becoming like seaweed coated instead of like an actual seaweed product. And so, I mean, I could go on for the whole podcast about the two years worth of challenges. We had to, and that’s why our first product became the, the sea spice because it just, it came as a byproduct, right?

Desiree Dupuis: As the chefs were working in the kitchen trying to develop salads and trying to develop snacks and already understand. They dried the seaweed and all of a sudden we had this like really tasty spice and we were like, okay, we can put that into a bottle and start selling that. Yeah. Right away as we continue to develop, you know, real seaweed food products that we real and we’re still trying to innovate and and so on.

Desiree Dupuis: So, yeah.

Alissa Miky: Thank you. I totally have the same mixture. Yeah. So, We start from the candy business. We’re lucky because we have a how to say, specific ingredients to make this beautiful candies that is like those seaweed. We have 400 years history in Japan. So easy. Of course. Yeah. Easy access in the past, like some ripe referred to eat these seaweed candies at the tea ceremony room.

Alissa Miky: So yes, it was really easy for starting the candy business. However, once when we decided to switch into the beverage, we are going to do a work first seaweed based beverage that the people can just drink as a. Daily juice, you don’t feel any freshness, saltiness, it’s just a juice and you don’t have any texture.

Alissa Miky: That’s also our technology too, but mm-hmm. It took four years to do the

Desiree Dupuis: basic four years.

Alissa Miky: Yeah. Oh my gosh. I know. It’s

Desiree Dupuis: too much. That’s wild. Yeah. We had beverages, like in our, we had a whole innovation pipeline which has been scaled back now because we, again, we, we are, we’re just building organically, but we had beverages because again, Really trying to leverage all the benefits that are already existing in, in seaweed and, and putting it into a beverage is such a no brainer.

Desiree Dupuis: So yeah, four years. Wow. That’s remarkable. Yeah,

Alissa Miky: well, especially, we were caring about the tastiness and then also the healthiness as well. So most of the time healthy, tasty can be opposite as you see. Of course. So if you’re gonna be tasty, that means mostly too, too much sugar. Too much sugar, sugar.

Alissa Miky: Oil. Oil,

Desiree Dupuis: all the things. Yeah. Right. So, but we, yeah, I mean we, not everybody loves our protein puffs because they are a healthier snack. I would say 90% of people under 40 that try them, enjoy them a lot. But we, we have had people that say they’re, they’re too bland or their flavor profile’s not strong enough.

Desiree Dupuis: And it’s like, well, the only way we can increase that is by adding oil or sugar. And so, oh, yes. Then we’re no longer a guilt-free, healthy protein-based snack anymore. Right. And so it’s like you can’t always necessarily, you know, have it all. We’re not gonna be Doritos. Oh, yes. Or, or Cheetos for that matter.

Alissa Miky: Totally, totally. So I totally understand you’re painful pay you know, the headache and then also the painless. So then now you have your, you know, product. Where do you sell? It’s all in Canada right now. Do you ship

Desiree Dupuis: nationwide? Yeah, right now we are, I mean we’re primarily on the west coast. Again, growing organically, but we are available, I would say across Canada all the way to Quebec is the furthest east that we’re available.

Desiree Dupuis: Congratulations. You know, Canada, it is a quite a large country, so geographically we are covering a lot of ground and we’ve actually been accepted into Whole Foods. So congratulations. Very soon on the shelves at Whole Foods with our full lineup. And yeah, we’re, we’re working on some major listings with some, the, the big grocery stores across Canada.

Desiree Dupuis: And eventually we’ll be going into the States. We would love to look at opportunities, I’m sure people over in Asia and even Europe would be interested in, in Canadian seaweed snacks. And so again, it’s just, it’s, it’s, you know, the scale and the growth. It’s. It’s not by enough. More than we can chew.

Desiree Dupuis: Oh, yeah. But don’t compare with the

Alissa Miky: internet service.

Desiree Dupuis: Yeah. So, so yeah, we’re, we’re, we’re trying to build a sustainable company, not just from obviously the, the, the term sustainable for the planet, but also financially sustainable harmony, balance for our people that work within the company. And make sure that you, like we can, we can be around, be profitable for a very long time.

Desiree Dupuis: Beautiful.

Alissa Miky: So what’s, what is your next dream? What do you wanted to do and do you have, like, tell me about your big picture. We would love to listen to like your beautiful stories. Yeah.

Desiree Dupuis: I mean, I think our mission at Cove is a values-based mission, you know mission-driven brand. And so we, the main goal is to empower people to know that, you know, climate change is, is a very heavy Issue that our generation is, is carrying and dealing with.

Desiree Dupuis: And we want, our brand exists to empower individuals to know that, you know, every time they make a conscious, mindful food choice, they are, you know, making decisions that impact the planet. And so our dream obviously is, is to build our community and to continue to empower people to believe that they’re, they’re making an impact with.

Desiree Dupuis: Their consumer food choices. And then in terms of seaweed, obviously our dream is, you know, seven days of seaweed to continue to innovate and deliver tasty, but healthy sustainable seaweed based products. Ultimately I I don’t think it’s going to be us, but I love the innovation that’s happening in seaweed based packaging.

Desiree Dupuis: Oh. So my, my dream would be to absolute like have our, you know, our tasty seaweed snacks in seaweed based packaging. Oh, come on. We have that solution. Okay. Yeah, we have that solution. Come on, let let us know. I just, I, I’m a marketing person, so I, I see the commercial, you know, you take, you have your family at the beach, everybody’s eating seaweed, snacks, and then you throw your packaging into the ocean, which looks absolutely.

Desiree Dupuis: You know, horrendous. No, man. No. Yes. It’s actually disintegrating and feeding back into ocean life. And so that is the ultimate dream is to have, you know, a plethora of, of healthy, seaweed based snacks in seaweed based packaging and have co be available all around the world for consumers that do wanna make those more conscious choices.

Alissa Miky: Beautiful. Beautiful. Thank you so much for the time. So for the last question, please. You know, Do you have any comments to the listener or the people who are interested in the seaweed business? Please like leave some of your beautiful comments.

Desiree Dupuis: Thank you. Yes, I would just encourage everyone to check us out.

Desiree Dupuis: Cove with a K. If you are in Canada, try our protein puffs, reach out. I manage our social media. I’d love to hear from you on Instagram, even through our website. If you are in the seaweed farming business or are interested in the seaweed farming business, I encourage you. Because this is a, is is becoming a booming industry in North America and we need more seaweed farmers.

Desiree Dupuis: We, as a brand, need more inputs. We need more, more seaweed, more dried seaweed especially locally sourced, dried seaweed. So I definitely encourage you to, to look into getting into seaweed farming and. Yeah. Anyone else? Feel free to reach out. We’re super responsive and love to hear from you. We need you because this is a growing industry and we really wanna make our mark and again, work, work with people and be aligned with people and build our community of people that care about the planet and the future wellbeing of, of this place we call home.

Alissa Miky: Beautiful. Thank you so much for

Desiree Dupuis: Nice to chat with you.