Two Birds One Stone

 The Two Birds Story

The journey of Two Birds One Stone began with our foundational beliefs of family, community and all the value that local food brings to both. Our story is filled with gratitude, laughter and lessons.

In 2017, a municipal-run local food project brought Kim and Heather together. (Thank you Huron-Kinloss!)  It didn’t take long for us to realize that we shared very similar passions around work, family, food and community.

Our goals from the beginning were to capture the healthy and unique flavors of local and heritage produce for our local community, with a business that allowed us to be creative and flexible enough to prioritize family time and the myriad of other responsibilities that mothers constantly juggle. 

It all began with broth: chicken, to be precise.  We bought all the different types of chicken bone broth we could get our hands on, looked at pricing, tasted them all and then began the process of creating something better. We trialed recipes, cook times, different ingredients and packaging until we were in love with the results. We knew our broth was good, but it wasn’t ready for the public yet. 

As any small business owner knows, creating a product is only one small step in a much larger process.  We needed to design a label, get our Public Health certification,  find our customer base, sales outlets, create a company, a logo, a slogan…we quickly realized that there would be a lot of hats to wear.  So what were two broth babes to do when faced with so many new tasks?  Divide and conquer, of course.  

We each chose an area to research and become the company expert in.  With a variety of areas like food safety, labels, social media marketing, packaging, accounting, documentation and tracking, graphic design and customer relations to consider, there was a lot to learn and many hoops to jump through.  Some of those hoops were easy to reach, especially with the help of the Municipality, and other local food businesses who were always willing to share their experience. Some other hoops were designed for much larger businesses and were very challenging to jump through from our small vantage point.  

While learning to manage these tasks was challenging, and often inefficient because of the smaller business model we were working with,  we learned as we went and grew in both our knowledge and scale.  But where we really had fun was in the kitchen!

Bone broth was just the beginning. Our second product was a unique garlic scape aioli, which was created by special request for the Bruce Botanical Food Garden’s annual Harvest dinner. From there, our product line grew exponentially.  Each new recipe was inspired by ingredients growing on our farms or by customer requests.

We learned how to create recipes that we could scale up while maintaining consistent flavour and quality.  We developed new methods of doing things, like using a maple syrup pan to bottle our hot sauce. We tinkered, experimented, shared plenty of delicious recipe attempts, some tears (partly from hot pepper mismanagement), a ton of hard work and many laughs in the process. 

Our first sales were done directly to customers in our community and our first wholesale experience was through Eat Local Grey Bruce. The support and enthusiasm we have received from our customers has  always been a joyful part of doing business. When we think back to our first craft show at the Kincardine Pavilion and remember how proud we were to sell our five products to a supportive and encouraging customer base, it makes us smile to see how far we’ve come since then. Customer loyalty has been so appreciated, from that first show to the many wholesale locations and shows we have done since.

Once we were through the first few years of growth and learning, we started to get the hang of the right balance between scale, sales and effort. Our three year plan seemed to be going in the right direction…until we hit some bumps along the road.   The next three years saw one or both of us suffering from health issues, loss or Covid. During those years, our business growth slowed, but our strong foundation as business partners and friends allowed us to support one other and our families through those tough years. We even managed to do a major marketing pivot with the business and keep it running while managing pandemic home-schooling and toilet paper wars.

Like many, coming out of those years found us fatigued. We still loved working together, we loved our customers, our products and the fact that we were now big enough to support other farms as well. We felt like we could regroup with some new business goals.  We were slowly moving towards a new business model when an unexpected regulatory shift meant we’d have to triple the business in size in order to continue.  This was a commitment we were not ready or able to make.

Most of the lessons that we learned taught us new skills. In contrast, learning that our supply chain and regulatory system is not built to support the type and scale of business we wanted taught us that systemic change needs to happen.  Small and medium scale businesses are good for both the economy and the community, especially at the Municipal level. The typical business model focuses on “bigger is better,” with fast growth and cheap inputs. We look forward to a day when support for a broader scope of business models becomes the norm. 

As the Two Birds journey comes to a conclusion, we are deeply thankful for the community of support that we have always enjoyed, and the work we were able to do together.  We feel enriched by both. We don’t know where the next path will lead, but wherever it goes, we know that it will always begin with that same rock solid foundation of family, community and local food. 

Thank you for helping Two Birds One Stone become a business we are both proud to have created. 

     Heather & Kim