30 years ago, Hiroko Sugiyama, Owner of Tama Organic Life Foods set out with a minivan full of organic daikon, eager to connect local farmers in the Vancouver community. What started as a small, hard-working mission to bring fresh, flavourful produce to those who missed the taste of home in Japan, grew into Tama Organic Life Foods.What was the defining moment or experience that sparked your passion for opening your business? Why did you choose this neighbourhood as the perfect backdrop for it?

The start of Tama is kinda of a long story but I’ll share the shortened version! Hiroko started this business because she wanted to support organic farms/farmers by bridging a gap between farmers and everyday people in the city. Of course, there were many other factors that led to the start of Tama but I’ll share 2 main points

1) around 1993-1994, she was caring for her husband who had gotten really ill and could no longer work (while raising 3 young kids). He had been the sole income earner so when it all suddenly stopped, Hiroko needed a solution. She was trying different means but without a work history in Canada, she didn’t have a lot of options

2) All while this was happening, due to her husband’s illness, she was lazer focused on ensuring her husband (and the kids) were eating healthy. (Hiroko had always been a healthy eater. She grew up with everything homemade, home grown veggies. It wasn’t until she moved to Vancouver where she noticed how much preservatives, artificial colour and flavours were being used). She shopped at her local Capers in West Vancouver (no longer there) for any available local and organic produce and goods. When that wasn’t enough, she connected with Hazelmere Farm, an organic farm out in Aldergrove. From there, she shopped once a week for fresh, local and seasonal organic produce at their farmer’s market.

Each week she would head out, she would wonder why more of this incredibly fresh produce wasn’t available in the city (this was long before farmer’s markets were in demand). The farmer’s were always too busy to bring produce to the city so slowly she began bringing items in. One farmer led to another organic farmer and soon she was able to fill up the family mini van to bring produce to the people in the city. She decided to make this her mission and her business.

As for being in this neighbourhood, we wish we had a romantic story to lay out but truth be told, we had little choice at the time we ended up here. 10 years since that move, we couldn’t be happier to be at part of Hastings Sunrise! Hiroko has a strong sense of purpose and an even stronger belief in how life presents itself. Moving to Hasting Sunrise was just a part of how Tama Organic’s “meant to be” storyline!

 

Walk me through your week running Tama Organics, such as how you take in new produce, decide on your bento box menu, and how often you visit the local farms you work with.

Each week looks different and each week comes with its excitement or challenges! In general, May through early October are our favourite times of the year as this is the start of BC harvest and crops become abundant! The excitement is all the FRESH produce we get direct from our farmers. The challenges: we never truly know what will be available because Mother Nature doesn’t work on the same daily schedule we do!

Each week we get updates from our local farmers about what is growing in their fields and what will be available for us. There isn’t much we say ‘no’ to because we know BC’s growing season is short and a big part of supporting organic farmers is to appreciate foods that are in season (so we take what we get!).

Sometimes we won’t get what we anticipate – typically the weather is to blame – too hot, sudden hail storm, too cold – sometimes its because a bear got to the fruit first etc – anything can impact crops. Some other staples like oranges and bananas, we still rely on our southern neighbours in California as BC growers just don’t have the infrastructure or climate to grow these tropical items.

Our bento menu is planned out on a weekly basis – it ties in with what we receive from our farmer’s and what veggie we want to highlight in our bento. Sometimes we plan our menu based on what our regular customers might like! (One of our regulars comes every Tuesday and Friday so we try to make sure her favourite bento menu items lands on those days! :p)

We visit our local farms at least once a year, every year! We usually try to time it so we can help out on the farm AND bring back produce, which our customers appreciate. Several of our small farmers do not distribute to Vancouver so without us going to them or waiting for someone who will happen to drive into Vancouver, we couldn’t get produce from these places. And these are the farms that specialize in a particular product that we can’t get elsewhere or their quality is unmatched and our customer’s won’t buy from an alternative farm. Our farm visits take us from Metchosin on Vancouver Island to Oliver, to Lytton etc! We have seen a lot of the beautiful landscape of BC

Since it is Tama Organics anniversary, what has been the secret to your long-term success? 

Our secret is no secret; it is our customers. We couldn’t support farmers without our incredible customers who value locally grown, organically grown foods and who also want to support organic farmers, just as we do. Our name “tama” means “oneness or whole” or simply “a ball/sphere” – we are all connected, like a circle, so without one or the other, we couldn’t make this work.

What are you most proud of when it comes to Tama Organic Life Foods?

We are most proud of the strong connections & relationships we have built with local farmers over the years. All of the farmers we work with and have worked with are people we have met in person or introduced by another – the human to human connection is important to us too. We have known some farmers since the beginning like Umi Nami Farm. Some farmers we have seen when they were just an undergrad, an aspiring farmer, and now they are running their own organic farm!

We are so proud to know these hardworking farmers and continue to support them however we can!

Do you have a memorable moment running Tama Organics? Is there a particular memory that has inspired you to keep going, or is there a difficult challenge you had to overcome that made your business even stronger?

Hiroko’s vision/purpose/mission/goal has always been to support farmers. Paired with an inability to say ‘no’ to farmers, it has gotten Hiroko into some memorable moments! She always places the needs of the farmers over her’s and it has left her with late nights at the store processing things after everyone has gone home. Fingers staining after cutting and pitting pounds and pounds of cherries. Slicing 40-50 lbs of apples to make apple chips. Or having the difficult realization that customers don’t understand why some of her items are priced higher – the realities of trying to support a farmer who had partial crop failure so the per price cost changes. Since we work with smaller scale farms, if crop fails, they don’t have back up acreage of crops to fall back on.

Over the years, she has learned that having great quality produce is only part of the equation, and conveying our message of supporting organic farmers in ways that customers can feel & understand it were equally important. These challenging customer conversations were always seen as a positive to Hiroko. And getting people to understand this was important for the larger impact of protecting the organic foods farmers.

What is a personal favourite meal to make with your own produce? Is there a meal you would recommend making using your famous local daikon or burdock root? 

You can never go wrong with a homemade miso soup (I recommend using our house made chickpea miso!). It is an uncomplicated ultimate comfort food dish for a Japanese person – especially after a long day at the store, a good bowl of miso soup can nourish the soul and your belly! (It is akin to the feeling a good bowl of homemade chicken noodle soup can bring! Nothing beats the comfort of a good bowl of soup!) We recommend adding daikon, from Umi Nami Farm, to your miso soup to level up the miso soup! Miso is loaded with health benefits too like helping support a healthy gut system, provide B vitamins which help with energy!

Daikon and burdock root are great when they are cooked long and slow in dashi – they become really tender and soak up all the flavour from the dashi . Chop up both in large chunks and slowly simmer in dashi. In Japanese it is called “nimono” which means to “simmer things”. You can add local carrots, cabbage, shiitake, kabocha, protein etc. Another great comfort food item full of nutrients!

Looking ahead, what kind of legacy do you hope your business will leave behind? Are there any exciting plans, collaborations, or changes coming soon that you are excited to share with the community?

The legacy we hope to leave behind is one that supported organic farming and farmers. And that hopefully we played a part in ensuring more and more people understand the importance of caring for our land and the world we live on by choosing to support their local organic farmers.

We have plans to add variety and grow our workshop offerings! We currently host a few miso making workshops a year but we plan to include other ‘how to make’ themed workshops that highlight Japanese food and health food using the organic ingredients we have available! We want to expose more and more people to all the delicious foods that our farmers work so hard to grow for us.