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Homemade, Self Made Sylvie Rochette

By Susan Pederson

Sylvie Rochette personifies the Canadian dream. From her humble beginnings selling spices at farmers’ markets to overseeing a multi-million dollar company today, she’s the kind of woman many Canadian women want to – and do – emulate.

In fact, thousands of women who learned of Rochette’s success also listened to a little voice inside that said, “Maybe I can do that, too.” And because of Rochette’s vision, they became their own successful business owners as part of Epicure Selections, a party-plan direct sales model and the largest Canadian direct sales company in Canada.

Today, Rochette presides over a growing direct sales empire of about 9,000 consultants who sell more than $40-million of her wares annually across Canada. Through happenstance and design, Sylvie Rochette has given thousands of Canadian women (most of them moms) the opportunity to earn a living while raising their families.

That’s all she set out to do for herself in the first place.

About 20 years ago, 26-year-old Rochette found herself tied to a full-time government day job which kept her away from her two young children (daughter Amelia and son Liam). Her wish to be home with them sent her to the basement of her Victoria, B.C. home, mixing up spices with the notion that others would also appreciate the no-salt, hand-crafted spice blends.

With her first batch loaded into her blue station wagon, she set off to her inaugural farmers’ market one Saturday morning, well prepared to open her stand at 10 am.

“But I got the times mixed up. We were supposed to be set up for 9 am,” she says. “I had just enough time to get in and open my back door and I started selling
from there.”

Selling indeed. She sold out that day and left with a fistful of orders for a myriad of other concoctions that her soon-to-be-loyal customers had requested. That’s not all she left with. She had just discovered the sweet taste of success.

$286 and counting…

“I made $286 dollars that day and I really thought I had arrived,” Rochette laughs.

However, she still had that pile of orders for products she had never made before. Undaunted, she set to work experimenting, adding flavours that she knew instinctually others would appreciate.

“I forgot to ask this one woman if she wanted red or green pepper jelly, so when I returned the next week, I had six different kinds.”

“I would try something and if it wasn’t good, I would just keep trying it. If I have to go back to it 20 times, I will…we still use that original recipe for pepper jelly today.”

Each week, Sylvie returned. Many of the new mixtures were everyday spices that women were already combining in things such as spaghetti sauces and dips for crackers.

Sharing the wealth

Victorian Epicure Inc., Rochette’s “back of car” company was founded in 1991. After six years of hitting farmers’ markets, trade shows and developing and marketing her line, there was more demand for her products than she could meet. In 1996, Epicure Selections was born of vision and necessity.

“I wanted to offer other moms the chance not only to grow a business but also to give moms everywhere the same things I wanted for my kids – easy alternatives to fast food that are delicious and affordable and that the home chef can make with easily found ingredients.”

One of those women is Jacqueline McGrath of Calgary who has been working with Epicure Selection for 13 years. She, too, started when her sons were very young as a way to earn income and be home to raise them. While she wouldn’t recommend starting a business with her initial business acumen, she has enjoyed an extremely successful career under Rochette’s tutelage.

“I wish I could say I started with Epicure because I was well-informed because you should always be well-informed before you start your own business. Regardless, I decided to sell it because I love to cook. I tasted it and knew it was right for me, plus I wanted to write off my cookbooks as a business expense!” she laughs.

Since joining Epicure, she has added 5,500 consultants who last year sold $12 million worth of product. She credits Sylvie with running the kind of organization with which anyone would be proud to be associated.

“Sylvie tells us to be proud of what we do – I have learned so much from her. She is a great cook but also very honourable. You just know you can trust her and she has your back.”

Hurdles to jump

There was a time, however, when Rochette was not met with such a spirit of faith in her abilities.

When she first wanted to expand her business, high-tech companies were the darlings of the financial world as the dot.com crash had not happened yet. Add to that the fact that her business was very female–dominated and individuals and companies would barely grant her an appointment, let alone a business loan.

“I was totally self-financed when I started; I started with nothing. I had to take care of my kids. I couldn’t not succeed. I also knew there was a need for these products. I wasn’t going to create world peace or anything by offering healthy alternatives to busy moms but I was doing something.”

The realization that she could make a difference to the health of Canadians, in addition to experiencing success selling her products, is what kept her going, driving her to greater success.

There are other happy scenarios that meet Rochette face-to-face. It isn’t uncommon for consultants to come up to her at conferences (held once a year) with grateful tears in their eyes, telling her how much they have developed as individuals and all they have learned through selling Epicure.

Says Rochette, who once thought of herself as too shy to sell anything, “I find it very heartwarming and humbling when they tell me things like this but I tell them ‘Girl, you did it yourself!’”

Just getting started

These days, Epicure products – now numbering more than 250 – are distributed across Canada through direct and catalogue sales. While some businesses drive their business and others respond to demand, Rochette says Epicure does both and that they have barely scratched the surface as far as market penetration.

Doing over $40 million last year (2010) and just shy of that in 2009 doesn’t sound like scratching the surface to many, especially in the recent economic climate.

“There will be more at-home dinner parties and people are going to want to replicate those flavours from restaurants: things like Thai, Indian, Greek and Indonesian spices.”

She also sees a large trend towards Latin American and Mexican cooking at home. Epicure plans to continue to lead the way for their customers by not only offering the spices but also recipes that people can produce in short order.

Although Epicure now is located on an idyllic 33-hectare farm in North Saanich, B.C., Rochette regularly travels to places around the globe to glean recipes and spice blends from other regions for our Canadian tables. That’s just one of the perks of her job now that her children are grown.

Pass the… company!

Another perk of having older kids is the opportunity for them to help run the company. In fact, two years ago, while she was just 24, Rochette’s daughter Amelia Warren took over the day-to-day operations. This may sound too wet-behind-the-ears to some until one considers that Rochette started Victorian Epicure when she was just 26. Clearly, success is in the genes (son Liam is a dancer in France).

“Amelia runs all the day-to-day. She’s smart and organized…. And I am the entrepreneur, the product developer and also focus on establishing more direct connections with growers and suppliers worldwide.”

Parental advice

Family has guided her choices throughout her life and her mother’s advice, “To whom much is given much is expected” as well as her father’s words, “If you can afford to be generous, be generous,” are infused throughout Epicure’s business practices.

“My father meant not only being financially generous which is sometimes the easiest but generous with your words, actions, time and love,” Rochette points out.

“This makes decision-making easy. No more deliberations over ‘should I give? What should I do?’ If I can afford it, I give... We have tremendous capacity as women and as entrepreneurs to positively impact the people and communities we interact with.”

Victorian Epicure donates at least 5% of its annual revenue to charities mostly associated with food security. From sponsoring peer cooking classes in London, Ont., to a community kitchen in Halifax and a healthy babies program in Prince George, B.C., Epicure reaches far and wide across Canada.

Internationally, the company sponsors eight foster children, an orphaned family in Madagascar and several medical projects in Senegal and Madagascar. Most recently, Rochette volunteered her cooking skills on a medical boat in Senegal which has a mission to serve remote villages accessible only by boat.

“When I am not cooking, I spend my time in the maternity ward - a very simple building with sometimes water - with all the women and babies.”

Like any thriving business, Epicure has had to focus their giving and, at time of writing, is revamping their Epicure Foundation. “At one time, everyone and anyone got money from us if we could afford it and they could rationalize their need,” Rochette explains. “For some time we focused on breast cancer because that made sense for an organization largely run by women. Then one of my long-time assistants was diagnosed with MS so that has become one of our causes. Outside the foundation, we have programs with a women’s transitional housing project and cooking programs for First Nations women.”

The balance myth

It’s easy to focus on Rochette’s obvious business accomplish-ments and assume that these define her but speak with her for more than 30 seconds, and one is taken over by an overriding sentiment: you wish she was your friend.

Unassuming and personable is just a start. There is genuine caring in her voice, which remains unhurried in spite of going overtime in an interview with this magazine. She laughs easily at herself and speaks as if wearing rubber boots and chatting over the back fence.

No wonder women are inspired by her - it’s clear that simply reaching success in business has never been enough. It’s equally important to Rochette that she remain, well, nice.

Rochette will be the first to admit she isn’t so likeable and relaxed because of attaining balance her life.

“The idea of having balance in your life is great for writing books and articles but I think it’s a fallacy that you can walk around feeling balanced 24 hours a day. I think that telling women they can achieve balance creates a level of stress and undermines women by telling them they are stressed because they don’t have balance. At the end of the day, you just do your best in the moment.”

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Pull Quotes and Photocaptions:

“I was totally self-financed when I started;
I started with nothing. I had to take care of my kids.
I couldn’t not succeed. I also knew there was
a need for these products.”

Sylvie Rochette, President, Epicure Selections (right) with daughter Amelia Warren, the new CEO.

Jacqueline McGrath is an Executive Sales Director with Epicure and, after 13 years, has a team of 5500 recruits.

 

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