Yellownknife salad dressing is so popular, stores are selling thousands of bottles
It started with a Facebook post back in April 2020.
"We will be making a batch of fish sauce and salad dressing for sale," it said.
Three hours later ... more than 250 bottles were sold, and Yellowknife's Bullocks Bistro was in business.
"This was incredible," said co-owner Joanne Martin.
"It reaffirmed that this was a viable product for us," she said.
Martin says the salad dressing and fish sauce has always been popular; people would go to the restaurant with their own bottles to fill up.
But when COVID-19 hit, people weren't able to get it and they were needing a fix.
Once word got out they could get it in local stores, people were pretty much lining up for the stuff.
"We've sold so much of it, we can't keep it on the shelves," said Yellowknife Co-op deli manager Megan Marks.
Marks says they've sold close to 7,000 bottles … since May.
"We get a shipment from them twice a week and we get people that come and they send it to family in Newfoundland and Ontario … it's so popular," Marks said.
The dressing and sauce are being sold in stores in four communities across the Northwest Territories.
Now the restaurant is about to make a big step up in production in hopes of getting their product out to the rest of the world.
"By the end of June we realized that we are going to need something bigger … we can't do the restaurant and this as well," said Martin.
So they purchased a spot in the Kam Lake area of Yellowknife and construction of a processing facility will begin in May.
"We will probably start out with three to six staff [and] we should be able to put out around 6,000 bottles a day."
Martin says her sauce and dressing is made with love and expects that selling it as a northern product will be a huge marketing tool for them.
If all goes according to plan, the new salad dressing and fish sauce plant will be open in August.