How a trip to Sweden inspired Joseph Chen to create Jöey Nordic Seed Crisps
In 2019, while working in consumer insights for Mondelēz, Joseph Chen travelled to Stockholm, Sweden to visit a friend. There, he fell in love with crispbread: a flat, dry bread usually made with rye flour. When Chen returned home, he began tinkering in his kitchen to recreate a gluten-free version of the popular Nordic snack. “My partner, Robert, is gluten intolerant,” Chen explains. “I always enjoy taking something that has gluten and making it gluten free.”
After experimenting with different seed combinations and techniques, Chen landed on a winning recipe with a nutty character and crisp texture, flavoured with saffron and pink salt. “It was a lot of trial and error,” he recalls. At first, Chen just made the crackers for his partner and friends to enjoy at home. But, in the fall of 2021, he quit his job at Mondelēz to start his own market research consulting business. With more free time, and encouragement from Robert, Chen considered turning his homemade seed crisps into a commercial product.
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His first step was to develop two more flavours: Truffle as well as Rosemary and Black Pepper, to add to his original Saffron and Pink Salt crispbread. “Through my CPG background, I knew that you should have more than one flavour to get peoples’ attention,” Chen says. He named his company Jöey Nordic Seed Crisps. “My mom and my partner always call me Joey,” Chen explains. He added the umlaut to give the name a Nordic feel, connecting it back to the origin of the product. “I also wanted to give tribute to Sweden and the Nordic region for the inspiration,” he says.
Jöey Nordic Seed Crisps made their debut in the summer of 2022 at a farmers market in Chen’s home of Prince Edward County in Ontario. “We got great feedback from the community,” he says. “We sold out every single weekend we were there.”
Chen’s customers encouraged him to approach specialty stores in the area about stocking his seed crisps. His first retailer, Carson’s Garden + Market, is Chen’s neighbour. From there, he began approaching other retailers and wineries in Prince Edward County, entering about a dozen retail locations in the area before he widened his reach to Toronto in November 2022.
Landing in Toronto’s Summerhill Market was one of Chen’s early wins. “I always dreamed about seeing my product there,” he recalls. “When the VP of merchandising told me that he tried our product and loved it, I literally cried. That was a huge win for us.”
Another big win, in the fall of 2022, was getting into the local program at Sobeys, which landed Jöey Nordic Seed Crisps on the shelves of the Foodland in Picton, Ont. It was actually another food entrepreneur—Margaret Coons, founder of the vegan cheese company Nuts For Cheese, who helped connect Chen to the local development specialist at Sobeys. “I’m so appreciative of the CPG community, especially the startup community,” Chen says.
As Chen’s business grew, he moved from a home-based production facility (his kitchen had been certified commercial as the previous owner, a chef, used to run his catering business there) to a gluten-free production facility in Milton, Ont. “My brother and dad would come with me once a week to do a huge bake for the whole day,” Chen explains. “That gave us time to bond as well.”
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The following year brought more great partnerships to Chen’s business. In fall 2023, Village Juicery began stocking its products, and since Village has locations in three Farm Boy stores, it brought Jöey Nordic Seed Crisps into another big-name grocer. Then, in November, Chen learned his seed crisps would be sold in seven Whole Foods Market locations in Ontario, starting in June 2024. “Seeing my product on the shelves there was really emotional,” Chen explains. “That was a huge milestone for us.”
The growth also spurred Chen to move his production to a co-packer in Ottawa. Now, Jöey Nordic Seed Crisps are available in about 150 locations in Ontario, plus one specialty grocer in Whistler, B.C.—Flute & Fromage—that discovered Chen’s product and reached out to him for a shipment. Chen hopes to increase his products’ reach outside of Ontario, and even into the United States, by working with new distributors. “We have a retail chain in Southern California who’s really interested in carrying our product,” he says. Chen is also planning to launch limited-edition flavours at the end of the year.
For Chen, after working so long behind the scenes of product innovation and brand strategy for other companies, it’s been an extremely rewarding experience to finally have a product of his own. One of his favourite parts of marketing Jöey Nordic Seed Crisps is doing demos and getting feedback from consumers about his products. Says Chen: “Getting peoples’ reactions is super fulfilling.”
This article was first published in Canadian Grocer’s September/October 2024 issue.
