When she had her first child about three years ago, she felt there weren't a lot of healthy options in the baby food aisle, so she decided to make her own baby food, and made much of the food her daughter Poppy ate.
At the time, they were living in her husband's native England, where he was working in finance. When the family moved back to Canada, the couple was looking for a business idea and decided baby food was a good fit for them. "I've always really loved cooking. I see myself as a very enthusiastic home cook," says Garrad-Cole.
The idea for Love Child Organics was born about two years ago and the line started selling in February. Garrad-Cole says here in Canada there isn't a really good selection of baby food compared to the U.S. or the U.K., and she wanted to offer something other than jarred food, which she says tends to be much more processed since it has to be cooked for a long period of time at high temperatures.
"We wanted something that was much less processed and also didn't contain any preservatives at all," says Garrad-Cole, noting even organic food can contain preservatives. Their production includes some pasteurizing and balancing the PH of the food, and then the sealing process allows it to be shelf stable for 12 months.
"It's a rather scientifi c process," says Garrad-Cole, who says taking the product from kitchen to stores has been a long process with a steep learning curve. "There are so many different components to running a business and you just have to learn so much and learn it so quickly." Although the final product is now produced in an organic facility, Garrad-Cole still designs the flavours in her own kitchen.
She chops and purees fruits and veggies, and tests various flavour combinations before starting the process of introducing a new flavour to the line. Although her husband is also on hand to help with the flavour testing, her kids, Poppy and Cameron, are the final judges.
"It doesn't matter if the parents like it, ultimately the kids need to eat it," says Garrad-Cole, and she admits there is one flavour she just couldn't bring together.
"We've been trying recently really hard to do something with green beans and pumpkin and banana and we just could not make it work out."
She went through many versions of the combination and in the end decided it just wasn't an option. It takes about seven months to roll out a new flavour from start to finish, and an important element to the ingredient list for all the flavours is quinoa, which is included for added nutrition.
"When I was making my own baby food I was always trying to include as many nutritious ingredients as I possibly could," she notes.
"I would always put kale or spinach in to something. I would never just make plain apple sauce, I would always add something else to it. So that's always our goal with each one of our products is to try to get as many nutritious ingredients in there as we can." Garrad-Cole works with a nutritionist as part of the Love Child Organics team. Although Garrad-Cole and her family now live in Whistler, she is a graduate of West Vancouver secondary and lived with her husband in Cypress Park before moving to England. When she lived in West Vancouver, she was a teacher at Caulfeild, West Bay and Chartwell schools. Her parents still live on Bowen Island.
Garrad-Cole and her husband John work on the business together, which has been an experience since they've never worked together before. "There's moments of challenges there," she says with a laugh. But, in general, the partnership is working out well, and the pair has big plans to grow the brand.
Currently, the company is running a campaign to raise money for charity. For every "like" they receive on Facebook, they will donate one dollar to Make-A-Wish until they reach 5,000. In addition, one cent per pouch of food sold will go to a charity called Playground Builders, which build playgrounds for children in war-torn countries.
