Sprague Foods has seen increased sales and increased frustrations as a result of Trump’s trade wars. The current situation makes planning for the future difficult. Keenan Sprague, above, with a can of spaghetti from the 1990s. That’s his sister Katherine on the label. (Charles Summers photo)
10-million pounds of goodness
Buy-Canadian wave turns Belleville canning factory into a household name
The first job I ever had on a farm was with my friend Keenan. We were both townies, maybe about 12 years old, growing up on the East Hill of Belleville, but his family, the Spragues, were an old family from Prince Edward County across the Bay Bridge. I’ll never forget that day.
His father Rick is a farm boy at heart, and let us ride in the bed of his pickup truck to head down to their land in Rednersville. (This was before the entire world was dorkified.) We laid flat as we went through town to avoid notice, and I recall the thrill of our little adventure as I watched the apartment towers on Bridge Street look down on us. Rick had us jump on a four-wheeler, and whip over fields of soybeans, spot spraying weed outbreaks from a small tank on the ATV. I felt so free and useful working with Keenan, and was quite surprised that I was paid at the end of the day, given it was probably the most exciting afternoon of my life.
Keenan had a Sega Genesis game system, and I had a cute sister, so fast friends we were. Now Rick was not only a gentleman farmer. He was a businessman, and the fourth generation of his clan looking after Sprague Foods — a cannery which had moved to Belleville from the County in the 1990s. Keenan would take me there, and we would play war games, climbing and hiding among pallets and pallets of dried beans awaiting their turn to be canned.
As a teenager, Keenan got me a job at Sprague Foods. I was excited to show how hard I could work. The first two weeks — the day shift — were OK. I found the factory impressive, and learned some new swear words. When the two weeks switched over to night shift, I found that I was not very tough at all and quickly shirked my duties: at least they did not have to replace anyone useful. Keenan and I both got older: Keenan went on to become a lawyer, and I sort of wandered the earth for a good spell.
But as surely as water finds its level, we all eventually become who we really are. Keenan is now the fifth generation of Spragues making convenient, affordable, shelf stable food for the masses, and I am living the dream of wandering around fields, killing weeds.
The Spragues were one of dozens of canneries in Prince Edward County back in the glory days, but after decades of attrition and consolidation, they find themselves the last man standing. Founded in 1925, they first packed locally grown tomatoes under their Mountain View brand. As time went on, they moved on to preparing things like legumes, pasta and rice pudding for larger companies and brands; I can recall us slapping a handful of different labels on the same batch of kidney beans.
“It’s fundamentally foolish to be a sub-scaled business in the food industry,” Keenan tells me point blank, as we sit in the offices above the factory floor in Belleville. If you’re a “sub-scaled” farmer, you’ll know exactly what he means. Margins are so thin these days that you need ridiculous gross sales to make them add up. This goes for everything from cash crops to canned chili.
Working with his parents, Jane and Rick Sprague, Keenan is now the fifth generation of Spragues making canned food from local produce.
And so, just around the time Keenan came back into the fold, the family decided to lean into their unique situation and expertise. Rather than continue to can for other businesses, they developed their own brand and product line of canned gourmet-quality prepared soups and side dishes in order to square up against their cheaper high-volume competition. His father, Rick, has a Master’s from Guelph in Food Science, and may very well be the Willy Wonka of beans. If you haven’t tried their product, you should, and you will see why they have gained the shelf space of major retailers across Canada and in the USA.
Like many food commodities generated in Ontario: like the onions and carrots of the Holland Marsh or the tomatoes and peppers of Leamington’s greenhouses, you’d be surprised at how much of what we produce here crosses the border. This is a largely baked-in feature of doing business in Canada: given our weak dollar and proximity to hundreds of millions of American consumers. Sprague’s is no different: the bulk of their canned soup product heads south to Costcos, Walmarts and Kroegers.
Sprague Foods can their own name-brand products and they are flying off the shelves of Canadian retailers.
The Sprague’s humble dedication has led to more than one challenge over the decades, but their latest is one on everyone’s minds. The Sprague’s unique, family-owned cannery has found itself in the crosshairs of current trade disputes and a sudden, new tariff could throw a monkey wrench into years of prospective business. As a truly Canadian business, this moment in time might be the beginning of the end, or the beginning of a new era for Sprague Foods.
Website traffic to Sprague Foods has risen dramatically over the last few months.
“Look at this,” Keenan says and he pulls out his phone and starts scrolling through social media post after social media post of Canadians extolling the quality and virtue of the Sprague’s business as a wave of economic nationalism continues to build across the country. The posts are adding up to millions of views, shining a light on their product that no amount of advertising could ever purchase. The brand is becoming a household name, and their products are flying off the shelves of Canadian retailers. Keenan is visibly stunned, but cautiously optimistic: “I feel like we’re actually about to reach escape velocity.”
The business’s upward trajectory was already in the works before the 2024 election of Donald Trump, but the surge of “buy Canadian” sentiment and the uncertainty of their American market has made planning for the future extremely difficult. There’s never a dull moment in the food business, and when once-in-a-lifetimes events like this take place it’s passion that binds and sustains an operation.
“Even when I was kid, I just loved it,” Rick reminisces about their old plant across the Bay of Quinte. “The activity, the machines, the smells. It was all just so cool to me.” Canned food seems like a funny thing to be passionate about, but when you’re there on the factory floor, it begins to make sense. You’re really just in a giant kitchen. Rick is the chef and he wants to share a meal with you. Thousands of pounds of food are being prepared and blended. Workers scurry about, machines beep, belts whiz, augers spin. It’s hot and steamy and fragrant, and you feel like your face is hovering over a warm bowl of soup.
Modern automation at work at Sprague Foods.
Rick is troubleshooting a machine they recently purchased as part of a $2-million lot in equipment from a mothballed Campbell’s factory. As their competition only gets bigger, Sprague doubles down despite their David and Goliath positioning. Keenan watches his father and chuckles. “He knows how every single thing in this plant works. My skills … are a little bit softer.” But Keenan’s millennial sensibilities — the craving for health, quality and authenticity resonate with the public — are successfully guiding the family’s brand and marketing.
The Spragues come by their crunchiness honestly. At Guelph during the 1970s Rick got a broad overview of the progress that was leading to ever greater yields in agriculture. What he saw was a decline in quality and that these developments enriched the institutions that farmers relied on instead of farmers themselves. Something was being lost in the headlong march of progress. His eyes get a little misty when he talks about the Heinz 1350 tomatoes he canned as a kid. “They don’t grow tomatoes like that anymore.”
A good chunk of the Sprague’s product line is certified organic, and they’re willing to pay a premium to keep their ingredients as absolutely Canadian as possible — all with no funny stuff. Health and quality are two sides of the same coin to Rick, and you can taste it in the food they make: it tastes like it was made fresh from scratch. The passion is palpable and it’s what drew Keenan back to the family factory.
“I took a pretty massive pay cut,” Keenan rolls his eyes, as he describes fulfilling his destiny. “But law was just fundamentally soulless to me.” Sacrifices like this are one of many the Spragues make to keep their family tradition alive. Running a complex business with paper-thin margins in a volatile economy takes more nerve than most of us can muster. Fifty employees rely on their continued tenacity.
Together, they churn out 10-million pounds of quality food in a calendar year, and continue to grow.
If you don’t see Sprague on your local grocer’s shelf: ask for it! For better or worse, calamities seem to benefit food businesses, but if we want to find them in the hard times, we’ll need to support them in the good times as well. Trade war or not, I have no doubt that the fifth generation of this family business will be far from the last, and we’ll all be better off for it.
Charles Summers owns Salt of the Earth Farm, a direct-to-consumer operation selling vegetables at the roadside, near Lyndhurst, Ontario.
