If you’ve been living in Niverville for at least a year or two, chances are good you’ve heard the word GORP at some point—and didn’t quite know what you were hearing. So what’s GORP, and where did it come from?
It’s an all-natural energy bar, and it came from local businesswoman Colleen Dyck’s kitchen.
“I started doing triathlons in 2004,” says Dyck. “I had to drive into the city to do the swim training, and that’s when this all came about. Because after swimming I was hungry as a horse, and so I was swinging through McDonalds on the way out, and I’m thinking, ‘Okay, I know this is a bad idea.’”
Unlike most of us, Dyck quit the habit and took action. “I started using energy bars, just the ones that were on the market, and what I found is that they had a weird, wonky aftertaste.”
The bars gave her a lot of intestinal upset, and with a bit of research she found out that those bars contained a lot of low-quality ingredients, cheap proteins, and high-fructose corn syrup.
“Just a lot of stuff I didn’t want to be ingesting,” Dyck says. “So I thought, I could do this better in my kitchen.”
The result is Dyck’s signature GORP bars, which came about after a lot of research and experimentation. Before long, she was run ragged trying to satisfy orders from family and friends. So she stepped up her game.
“I majored in entrepreneurship at Red River, so I knew that was something that was in me,” Dyck says. “I had no idea what an incredibly long, hard process it would be to get a shelf life without using preservatives, to round up the money to do all the testing… and then all the regulation, and then trying to find a facility to try to manufacture in.”
To make matters worse, her house then burned to the ground. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as it allowed Dyck to design a new home which could include an industrial kitchen in the basement.
Dyck has always been passionate about keeping her product as fresh as possible. After 8 years of testing, she managed to achieve a 225-day shelf life, or 7 and a half months. “The initial backlash I got from distributors and retailers was strong and swift. They wanted a year. Two years. And I’m like, no, I don’t think the public wants to be eating stuff that’s been sitting in a warehouse for a year.”
Dyck says it’s important to stick to your guns when it comes to your core values. She refers to it as authenticity, and works hard to build it into every aspect of her business.
“I think that a lot of companies start out with the best of intentions,” Dyck says. “You get told in the industry, ‘But this is the way everyone does it. Why are you trying to swim against the tide? What do you know, little lady?’”
Despite many people urging her to change her recipe, to only sprinkle in the expensive ingredients, the active ingredients that set her bars apart from the rest of the market, she decided to keep her product as high-quality as possible. Today, manufacturing about 30,000 bars a day and employing a staff of 20, she is using almost exactly the same recipe she started out with.
The bars are now available in more than 600 retail stores across Canada, including some sizeable chains. “We’re in Mountain Equipment Co-op, and that’s coast to coast. We’re in Federated Co-op, in a certain segment of their grocery chain,” she says. “Then the Northwest Company took us on, and they service a lot of stores in the north.”
Next up was Domo Gas, who contacted Dyck out of the blue. “They took us into all 44 of their gas stations from here to B.C. And because of them, the distributor that they use took us on.” After that, the bars started to appear in convenience chains throughout B.C., and in Calgary and Toronto.
You may also have seen the bars in Shoppers Drug Mart, who is currently doing a test with Dyck’s product. “We’re only in about 11 of their stores, but you never know. They’ve got 1,300 locations across the country.”
So far, retailers and distributors have been reaching out to her rather than the other way around, but that’s not to say her company doesn’t have innovative marketing ideas.
“We’re going to make a ‘culture committee.’ We’re going to start showing up at emergency wards, or wherever, with GORP bars for people. We’re going to bomb neighbourhoods and just put them on the street and hang a bar on everyone’s door, in parking lots. [We want to] engage the community in a different way.”
Several professional sports teams have been vocal sponsors, including the Winnipeg Jets. Two years ago, former Jet Zach Bogosian offered to give a free endorsement. To this day, the Jets buy directly from Dyck and stock their dressing room.
As a result of GORP, Dyck has become a presence in the world of ag business, sitting on the Manitoba Rural Adaptation Council and the Manitoba Food Processors training board. Recently, she was invited to sit on a speaking panel in Ottawa on the subject of Canada’s future role as one of the most trusted food sources in the world. Alongside her were heavyweights like Michael McCain (of McCain Foods), Amanda Lang (of the CBC’s Lang and O’Leary Exchange), and representatives from A&W and giant internet retailer Alibaba.
“I felt very unqualified to be sitting on this panel,” Dyck says. “I actually emailed them back and said, you know who you’re talking to? I make energy bars in my basement. Let’s be clear. I am not a big deal. You might have the wrong person. And they said, ‘Nope, you came recommended and we want you.’”
One of the most frequent questions Dyck gets asked is: when are you going to move your business? “When are you going to go to Winnipeg? You should move it to Calgary, or you should outsource production. That’s crazy talk as far as I’m concerned.”
Dyck says nothing makes her happier than to be working in Niverville and creating jobs for the high-calibre people here. “I’m honoured to be able to provide jobs in this town. I look forward to providing hundreds more if I can.”
