My name is Alex Jopson and I've been working with and helping my best friend and partner Nadine Jopson with her fairly new Craft Soda company Heartberry Soda
Heartberry Soda is a soda focused on lower sugars, real fruit, and featuring common local medicinal ingredients used by first nations. Right now she has flavours of Raspberry & Fireweed, Lemon & Birchbark, Ginger with Rosehips, Strawberry Rhubarb and more recently a Salal Berry soda. We are working for a couple of Canadian foragers who are either run by first nation members, or working with their local first nations. We are working to ramp up production as the demand is massive.
What we are asking this community:
1) introductions to other services, companies or providers who want to or are striving to work with indigenous producers in the food and beverage industry. Shipping, packaging, ingredients, and any other sourcing for example.
2) alerts to any grants or funding for businesses run and owned by female, indigenous and people with disabilities. This company is 100% owned by Nadine Jopson
3) We are also working on her first round of funding. Ideally looking for partners who have experience in food and beverage, or has connections that can ramp up this business. We do have our own facility and production space, but looking to get some newer equipment to streamline.
Thank you for your time in reading this, and thank you in advance to any of you that might be able to help us make some great connections! You can reach us at hello@heartberrysoda.com or you can also find and connect with us on LinkedIn.
Hi Alex, Check out https://yukafinespirits.com/ for potential collab opportunities. Both your product lines leverage local ingredients so there could be some shared sourcing.
You should contact the Small Scale Food Processors Association (SSFPA) https://women.ssfpa.net/
They just finished a pan Canadian pilot project to accompany female lead enterprises in the food transformation space. They are working with the primary funder to extend the program. They are also working on the question of access to reasonable financing options for Women run food transformation businesses. I am sure they would love to hear from you!
We have a no fee, no strings attached Brand Audit we are offering Canadian brands as our way to help in these uncertain times. Would love for my team to craft one for Heartberry.
We are not First Nation ourselves but have been working with Hurron-Wendat Nation Council for the last year and a half on comm-mkt projects here in Québec. And in cas you are curious, here is also a link to our more standard PRESENTATION.
We seem to be already connected on LKD. Will poke you there.
Hi Alex. Please ask Nadine to send me a message at sandra.ludwig@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca, and I can put her in contact with IRAP's Indigenous network, which seeks to help Indigenous-owned businesses grow through innovation.
There's a fully funded course - that is Indigenous owned with some Indigenous instructors - that could possibly be of help? https://jellyacademy.ca/digital-marketing-bootcamp-funding-2025
This sounds like an amazing opportunity and a very worthy cause to get behind!
We support SMEs in navigating the funding landscape to help accelerate agri-food companies. Our sector-focused approach allows us to work closely with clients to source opportunities, determine eligibility, write strong applications, and maximize entitlements - with a 98% success rate.
Feel free to reach out for a free eligibility report! 🙏
Very cool product - Can I recommend Connecting with the National Circle for Indigenous Agriculture and Food? they are fantastic to work with, and can definitely help your scale up.
