Windsor food company poised to become Canada’s top pita chip maker

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The stack of pita chips keeps growing higher for Cedar Valley Selections and Ottawa has made another big bet on the Windsor food manufacturer to help it increase its capacity and market reach.

For the second time in two years, FedDev Ontario has given the company a $1-million repayable, zero-interest loan to scale up to meet the explosive demand for its pita chips and salad dressings.

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“The funds are going to be used to invest in manufacturing equipment as well as in people,” said Cedar Valley Selections’ co-owner Ameen Fadel, who started the business as a high-school class project in 2015.

“We’ve doubled our business year-over-year and we have a lot of opportunities, especially in the states right now. To grow our business, we really need to automate to increase our capacity.

“With more business coming along we need more people, from general labour to production supervisor and a management standpoint.”

What started in the family kitchen with his mother Surria Fadel’s fattoush salad dressing has grown into a new 12,000-square-foot manufacturing plant with a growing array of food products.

Surria Fadel, who is the company’s chief operating officer, and husband Ramsey are co-owners of the family venture that now employs 29 people and is in the process of hiring four more.

“FedDev Ontario is there to help companies scale up,” Ruby Sahota, the federal minister of democratic institutions and minister responsible for FedDev Ontario, said Thursday in making the funding announcement in Windsor. “This was a part of the scaling-up-industry fund.

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“Cedar Valley does have a beautiful story and their product is great and we want to see Canadian products on our shelves and across the world. It’s the government’s job to make sure we’re there to support manufacturing.”

Sahota said the federal government has invested more than $2.8 billion in similar projects in southern Ontario since 2015, helping with over 3,600 job projects.

“It’s important for Canadians to understand that the investments we make end up leveraging more money and more capital into the region,” Sahota said.

“For instance, the pita that the company uses is being brought in from a (local) bakery. Orders for the bakery are increasing as well as (Cedar Valley’s) production increases.

“It has ripple effects into the community.”

It’s been more of a large wave than just a ripple of success for Cedar Valley, which expects to become the No. 1 pita chip manufacturer in Canada with this latest investment.

The first loan of just under $1 million two years ago allowed the company to increase capacity by a factor of five. This latest funding will do the same again, and it will also increase efficiency and allow further diversification of their product line.

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“It’s been a lot of hard work to grow this business and, without the funding, we couldn’t do it,” Surria Fadel said.

“It’s allowed us to grow from manually making the pita chips to this automated line. Automation makes some scared they’ll lose their job, but it actually creates jobs.”

Ameen Fadel said the company has already exceeded the goals and milestones set out in their FedDev Ontario application in the first 12 months of the two-year agreement.

“We’re growing faster than we thought we ever would, which is a great problem to have,” Fadel said.

“We just moved into this facility a couple months ago and we’re already seeing our warehouse overflow and we’re seeing offsite warehousing now as well.

“Now, it’s how to do we keep up with this demand and growth and make sure we make good on our promises and commitments to our retailers and customers?”

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