Tracy Lydiatt is willing to give up 40 per cent of Great Bear Paleo Bites for $200,000 and partnership with one of CBC’s Dragons on the Dragon’s Den.
Photo by Trevor Nichols
An Oliver business owner took her second shot at television glory when she pitched her product to Dragons’ Den producers earlier this month.
Tracy Lydiatt, owner of Great Bear Paleo Bites, didn’t meet the stars of the CBC’s business pitch reality show in Kelowna March 10, but she did show off her “non-dairy, no-wheat, no-soy, no-nut, no-egg, no-cane-sugar nutritional snack cookie,” to the show’s producers at an audition attended by several reality TV hopefuls.
Now, she says, those producers hold her television fate in their hands as she waits for a call-back that could come any day.
March 18, Lydiatt was at work in the Oliver office that houses a large workspace and the kitchen where she makes all of her products.
Earlier that day she and her team had made the latest batch of Cocoa Goji bites in the downstairs kitchen, and now, in the middle of the afternoon, they were labelling packages with ingredient lists.
“They were really lovely people; it was pretty low stress,” she said of her 15-minute pitch to the Dragons’ Den producers. “I feel good about how I went in: I brought my A-game and now the rest is not up to me.”
Lydiatt explained that she is willing to give up 40 per cent of her company for $200,000 and access to the Dragons’ business and distribution networks.
It’s a sizeable portion of the business she has spent the last three years of her life growing, but Lydiatt isn’t precious about her company.
“What’s that saying? It’s better to have a small piece of a valuable pie than a big piece of an inexpensive pie,” she says.
The Oliver native started her company in Vancouver in 2013. An amateur baker, she was inspired by friends in a crossfit class who were searching for a snack that fit their paleo diet.
As she experimented, Lydiatt realized that there is an ever-increasing number of people with dietary restrictions, and she tried to create something that nearly anyone could eat.
The result was her Great Bear Paleo Bites, a coconut-based cookie similar to a macaroon and sweetened with coconut sugar and dried fruit.
Remarkably, although she’s been pumping them out for three years now (currently at a rate of about 15,000 a month) Lydiatt says she still loves chowing down on her cookies.
“They don’t whoop you up the side of the head with sweetness,” she said as she popped one into her mouth during a tour of her kitchen.
Not long after she started her company a serendipitous visit home saw her move the business from the big city to Oliver. Lydiatt said she was faced with opening her own kitchen in Vancouver, which would have cost a fortune, and found her current location on Fairview Road almost by accident while house sitting for her parents.
Since then, she’s rebranded and bought a Markem 9840 packaging machine that allows her to package her product much faster. Her business, she said, is at a completely different place than it was three years ago.
Back then, when she was first getting started, she also auditioned for Dragons’ Den. She said they liked her products “but they told me to go away, because I was worthless. I had no sales.”
“It was really nice to be able to go back and see how far we’ve come from that, and where we are now,” she said.
“I started the company with a vision: I have an exit plan in mind,” she continued, saying that one day she hopes to grow the business to a point that it’s attractive enough to sell. These days her business is her hobby as well as her job, and she hopes to one day have more time to work on other projects.
Until then, she continues to grow her business, and April 9 is opening it up to the public for an open house.
The free event will feature a bake sale, local vendors, crafts and tours of her business and kitchen.
Proceeds from the event will also be donated to Mike Watson, the local viticulturist who recently underwent a transplant to combat a rare liver condition.
By Trevor Nichols
