Meatless Gourmet goes for growth: performer goes from managing Shania to managing food.

Evaline Kasner makes no apologies for being discriminating about what she puts in her mouth and how her food should be prepared.

Even the slightest hint of red meat off someone's barbecue grill and her sensitive taste buds can pick it up on her veggie burger.

When she established Meatless Gourmet Inc. five years ago, a Kirkland Lake alternative food processing company, she was convinced the idea would immediately take off.

Turned off by some of the "cardboard-tasting" vegetarian products on the market, Kasner was on a mission to make meatless alternative foods much tastier and more socially acceptable.

However, it has been far from an easy road for the soft-spoken but driven 57-year-old entrepreneur.

Kasner felt she was doing her part in some small way to diversify the local economy and create some new job opportunities along the way.

The venture was born out of a personal need after she became a vegetarian in 1994.

After working for years in the country music industry--first as a performer and later as Shania Twain's manager in the early to mid-90s--Kasner discovered that life on the road wasn't easy for a vegetarian.

Often, Kasner and Twain (herself a vegetarian) commiserated about their limited choices in finding meatless alternatives.

After retiring from the Nashville music scene, she re-established her northern roots by launching her own brand of high-quality, healthy meat alternatives.

She collaborated with co-founder Surekha Jasani (who has since departed) on recipes and launched the company in 1999.

Yet the soy food industry was still in its infancy and their grand ideas were undercapitalized.

Kasner invested a "few hundred thousand dollars," but admittedly needed more like a "couple of million" to deal with marketing, distribution, quality assurance and liability issues.

"It's very similar to the music industry. You think you've got this fabulous product and everybody's going to want it, only to realize that is not the case."

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The company struggled and it did not take long before her personal investment was depleted.

Banks would not provide any risk capital for a small business startup and she turned to the Kirkland Lake and District Community Business Development Corporation for a loan to buy equipment.

Located today in a mini-mall, her 10-employee facility rolls out between one to two pallet-loads a week, each carrying 240 cases of soy-based veggie burgers, fritters, samosas, cabbage rolls, pot pies, 'chicken' nuggets and lasagna.

Her products contain no meat, fish, poultry or eggs. Only the lasagna contains dairy products.

Her three Toronto-based distributors ship to a mostly institutional client base across Canada and parts of Upstate New York.

Business has been picking up. The company landed government contracts with corrections facilities, hospitals, universities, and some airlines and restaurants, though Kasner is guarded in naming any clients.

Big food processing giants such as Kellogg's, Maple Leaf Foods and Heinz are now jumping on the veggie bandwagon and competition has heated up very quickly.

"Many companies are realizing there is a great segment of the market that they weren't tapping into," says Kasner.

As well, societal concerns over a spate of food-borne illnesses has caused consumers to make better health-conscious food choices.

To ensure food safety, Meatless Gourmet adheres to HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point) standards, an internationally recognized procedure for ensuring food safety from its raw state through processing and shipping to the consumer.

There are still a few hurdles to cross.

The company's raw ingredients of soy, wheat, lentils, herbs, spices and natural flour are imported from other parts of Canada, the U.S. and Finland.

A future goal is to secure an extruder. The high-tech cooking technology, worth about $1.5 million, converts the raw material vegetable proteins into meat-like fibres, allowing vegetarian processors like Meatless Gourmet to manufacture meat and poultry substitutes with the same look, texture and taste of meat.

Currently, the technology is not available in Canada and Kasner must import extruder products from the U.S., Israel and Finland.

Kasner says if a few contracts she is bidding on come to fruition, she believes the volume would be enough to encourage Timiskaming farmers to grow the raw material she needs.

"If we can step out and create things that can be value-added to go to a market elsewhere, then we truly become diversified."

www.meatlessgourmetinc.com

By IAN ROSS

Northern Ontario Business