With uncertainty looming around U.S. President Donald Trump's threat of 25 per cent tariffs, even smaller communities such as Nakusp can turn to local businesses to lessen their reliance on American grocery items.
Home Grown Market, which opened nearly 50 years ago as a health store and today also focuses on locally grown foods, has expanded its building space substantially the last decade thanks to owner Mickey Wojnarowski, who also chairs the Nakusp and Area Development Board's agriculture committee.
"Part of the reason we're called 'Home Grown' is we don't want to be projected as just a health food store," he said, adding that his staff of about eight can spot local product gaps they're able to fill for the community.
Wojnarowski provides B.C.-sourced fish and meat, supplements, and ethnic goods from overseas, as well as pears, plums, cherries, berries, hazelnuts and various apple varieties that his five-acre farmland yields with some 50 fruit trees. For his market, there's been little need so far to adjust the product line because it's been supporting Canadian from the beginning.
"We're very conscious of where everything comes from," he said. "If it's bought by a big company, we'll see where else we can buy it from."
It can be challenging to navigate, especially with popular providers such as Yogi Tea, Wojnarowski said, as "these are really fantastic companies, but they're American companies."
He added that unlike the growing season in Nakusp, "the sad reality here of fresh produce is there's not a lot of option" during the winter. The colder periods create difficult times for sourcing anything fresh locally, while in the warmer months "every producer wants to sell me tomatoes," Wojnarowski said, so the solution may be targeting the shoulder seasons.
Another idea he'd like to sail with locals is a community food hub, to get more collaboration happening among Nakusp's businesses and residents.
Over at the village's Save-On-Foods, staff have been bolstering product signage to help customers more easily identify Canadian products, according to store manager Riley Kanigan.
He didn't go into specifics on whether to expect changes to what American grocery products the store sells, but said Nakusp's Save-On-Foods already pulls much of its supply from Canadian distributors via its Lower Mainland warehouse.
"A couple of my distributors have talked about brand changes," said Tyler Norris, who owns the Valley Foods Store.
"I've got a whole brand of beef jerky that's out of Saskatchewan, all my milk's from Canada, my bread's out of Alberta," he listed, noting the store's previous owners used to run an attached bakery that provided fresh bread. "We try to get local when we can."
Still, Norris said it's "still too early to say what the ramifications will be" of Trump's tariff threats.
Back at Home Grown Market, Wojnarowski encourages the community to look out for his staff's brand-new kitchen that could be ready as soon as this year.
"Once we have our kitchen made, we'll be having more stuff made in here," he said.
