Flavour for the rest of us

The couple behind Kootenay Spice are building a business based on sharing their passion for delicious and healthy flavours

Dan and Shannon McIlmoyle enjoy the Kootenay lifestyle and the wonderful food the region offers. — Photo courtesy Dan and Shannon McIlmoyle

Along with the rest of us, Dan and Shannon McIlmoyle love delicious homemade food. Where they differ from many, however, is in their true pursuit of cooking with flavour. For years they’ve grown a garden at their home in Trail, B.C., and have been creating gourmet food that would make your mouth water.

The couple were finding themselves providing recipes and foodie tips to friends and family, which made them wonder if they could take their interests and build a business. The result is Kootenay Spice, a local company creating spice blends from the McIlmoyles’ expertise.

“We just like to try new things and that’s probably the most fun of it all,” said Shannon. “We experiment and we’re constantly eating delicious food. Usually we’ll come up with a recipe and research it a bit online and (develop it to) what we think it should taste like. Then we’ll take input from elsewhere—be it friends, be it online—and we’ll basically combine a whole bunch of ideas and try it out.”

Kootenay Spice is a relatively new business and the McIlmoyles are enjoying the process of building their product. They’re always creating new spice combinations and recently increased their salt-free options to meet customer needs. They have started out in an industrial kitchen that they use in the off hours—a win-win situation—which means they’ve been able to start creating sauces in addition to their dry packaged spices. They keep an active Facebook page, but also write a company blog providing recipes and content for everyone, whether they’ve discovered Kootenay spices or not.

For the moment, Kootenay Spice has primarily been selling its blends at local markets and online. The McIlmoyles have been printing their labels at home, but are working on sourcing the tedious job out to a professional printer. Alongside the debates of bottle or bag and storefront versus middleman comes the excitement of a growing business. Meanwhile, the rest of us can experience the passion of others thanks to business people like the McIlmoyles.