Alkeme Foods
Alkeme Foods, Ltd
Where: Rossland, BC
Year Established: 2017
Website: thisisalkeme.com
Owner: Melinda and Todd Kopet
We make wildly fermented gluten free sourdough breads including bagels, buns, pizza crusts and loaf breads and soon we’ll be offering mountain bars as well.
Give us a brief description of your manufacturing processes and philosophy.
Our mission has always been to endlessly strive for a better food system. We care. About everything. We care about the food we eat. We care about the food you eat. We care about where it comes from. How it impacts your health. How it is grown. How the grower is compensated. We care about how many layers of transportation and distribution occur to get food into your hands. And we care about the impact those layers have on the quality:cost ratio. We care about the environmental impact of our packaging (we hate it, so we aim to reduce it). We care about our staff. We care about efficiency. We care about thoughtfulness in our actions. We care about other growers, suppliers and producers who care like we care. So, yeah, we care about a lot.
What we don’t care about is maintaining the status quo. We don’t care about fitting into the mold. We don’t care about maximizing earnings at the cost of the well-being of our customers or the planet. We are not perfect. We are not operating at our target level. But everyday we strive to get better.
How many employees and/or contractors do you work with?
Six.
What brought you to the Kootenays and how long have you been here?
We fell in love with the mountains and the community here in Rossland. We’ve always been in love with nature, and after spending most of our days in the city we decided that we wanted to reinvent where we were headed. We moved to the Kootenays to give ourselves time and space to create something new and put our lives on a path filled with purpose and service. In essence, we wanted to reshape our future and this was our destination to do so.
Tell us about the history and relative work experience of your founder(s).
Melinda Kopet is the most caring person on the planet. She cares about you, possibly more than you do. As a gluten sensitive consumer herself, Melinda is in tune with market demands and is the head of product innovation. Highly engaged with the Functional Medicine and holistic nutrition communities, she works hand-in-hand with experts in the medical field to tailor products to the consumers’ needs. She has extensive work experience at a $20M+ online advertising business with roles in product development, strategic partner relations, sales and marketing, manufacturing food production and a BA in English.
Todd Kopet loves to eat. Loves to cook. Endlessly intrigued by the marriage of art and science at the heart of bread baking. He has a work history at $100M+ companies in corporate financial analysis and planning, market strategy, market sizing, competitive analysis, and capacity and planning. He graduated with honours in Culinary Arts and has an MA, Economics, and BS, Cum Laude in Mathematics and Economics and “works” as an uncertified, un-limber aspiring yoga instructor.
