Inspired
to create a holiday
cheese board? Turn the
page for ideas and a
chance to win one!innovation for three years. What makes this job incredibly
unique is that no day is the same. It involves providing stra-
tegic direction for the innovation behind PC products,
ensuring that product standards and consistent quality are
always met and travelling the world to find what’s new and
next for our customers.How deep do you dive to find “what’s new
and next”?
When we travel for inspiration and ideas, it’s really about
getting to the restaurants, unique food shops and retail
stores to understand and evaluate what’s trending. We may
go to a restaurant because we know it has amazing vegan
offerings and we want to be inspired for new plant-protein
products. It’s also about determining what trends are really
viable to develop into products for our consumers and what
trends are simply fads.
We also identify themes through travel and research. If
we see a particular f lavour in multiple places, we determine
if there is an opportunity to bring that f lavour profile into
some of our PC products. Sriracha was a very good example
of that. bhMIND BLOWN: That was the state I was in
after biting into a piece of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
while on a farm-to-fork tour in Italy last year. I could barely
speak, but I managed to eek out, rhetorically, “This is what
Parm is supposed to taste like?”
When I was a kid, we sprinkled “parmesan” from a plastic
bottle on our Tuesday night pasta. It was dirt dry and
smelled like old socks. As a result, it never made the grocery
list in my adult years.
But that taste memory didn’t align with what I was cur-
rently devouring. Was it the Italian wine or the starry Parma
sky that was seducing me? No, I was just eating the real deal:
a crumbly, salty wedge of cheese handmade using tech-
niques developed during the Middle Ages and now rigor-
ously monitored by a local consortium that stamps each
wheel of cheese produced in the region. To receive this
stamp of authenticity, exacting standards must be adhered
to, starting with what the region’s cows graze on and ending
with a 24-month aging process under specific conditions.
I share this food memory not to brag about that once-in-a-
lifetime trip but to inspire you. See, you don’t have to travel
to Italy or drop a bundle of dough to sink your teeth into a
beautiful, authentic piece of Parmigiano-Reggiano. In fact,
you don’t have to go farther than the cheese aisle at your
local President’s Choice grocer.
We sat down with Kathlyne Ross, vice-president of prod-
uct development and innovation at Loblaw Companies Lim-
ited, to get the scoop on how they travel the world to find the
trendiest and most authentic food offerings – like Parmi-
giano-Reggiano – so that you can enjoy them at your own
family gatherings.
What drives the company’s desire to find
new items?
President’s Choice has always been about discovery. We’re
always travelling to taste new cuisines and f lavours and
bring them back to share with our consumers. No one has
been able to do that the way we do.
How many global trips do you take in
a year?
Our product development teams travel the world quite a
lot. I often take one big international trip a year to a country
where we want to explore new food trends. Last year’s explo-
ration was in India. I also explore different cities across
Canada and the United States to see what is happening.
Portland, New York and Minneapolis have been my recent
travel destinations.
Sounds like a dream job! How long have
you been doing this?
I’ve been the vice-president of product development and