Featured Partner: Prima Food For Sport

October 8, 2014

Every week, Spud will be featuring one of our fantastic partners. This involves some tasty info, photos and a giveaway for twenty Spud customers (see below).

This week, we have chosen Prima Food for Sport’s Dave Vukets, who is creating fresh energy bars we love to eat in North Vancouver.

Don’t Prima Food for Sport’s fresh ginger and pistachio bars sound delicious? Would you like to try one yourself?

The first 20 customers to comment on this Facebook post with their Spud customer ID will have this week’s item added to their account for free on their next delivery*. If you aren’t already a fan of Spud Vancouver, please become one!

*Please note: winners must have a Spud account to receive the free item – if you do not have a Spud account, please sign up. Accounts can only win once per three (3) month period. Winners have a responsibility to respond to the direct message acknowledging their winning status within 72 hours. Your free item will be included within your next free delivery day order, the following Sunday through Saturday.

We had a chance to interview Dave of Prima Food for Sport:

Q: How did you decide on your four final flavours?

A: Prima Food for Sport was “born” at Musette Caffe, the cycling cafe in downtown Vancouver. I was very fortunate to have had the chance to test out multiple bar flavours by selling through Musette before Prima was officially launched in 2013 – in 2012 we were selling the same bars at Musette, just wrapped in butcher’s paper. We tried a whole bunch of flavours and these four were the most popular! I wanted to offer unique flavours that I had never seen before in an energy bar, like our Chai Spice, which happens to be my personal favourite. It’s really great when you are out cycling or hiking to have food along with you that that tastes, well… good!

Q: How important is it to remain in Vancouver?

A: We make the bars out of a new commissary space on Industrial Ave, and our home base is still in North Vancouver. Everyone who lives here loves Vancouver and the North Shore, and it is a beautiful place to be making and selling food. In terms of a locally focussed start-up like Prima, Vancouver is a great place to be, because people support small companies, and we have a very active population which appreciates our products. It has also been great getting to know lots of other folks in the local food business and supply chain, over the last couple of years. We work with local suppliers as much as possible, right down to our packaging, which is made in Coquitlam, B.C.!

Q: What inspired you to create locally sourced and optimized “food for sport”?

A: My background is as an elite road cyclist! While I was racing with the Canadian National Team, we competed in France and Italy, where we were exposed to European cyclist diets. It was an eye-opener, since in Europe, professional cyclists eat mostly “regular” food. For example, they grab dried fruit instead of energy gels, and rice cakes or sandwiches instead of processed energy bars.

I have also studied Food, Nutrition and Health at UBC, so I know understand how detrimental processed food is to our health. I always found it ironic that so many products labelled as “sports nutrition” are not very nutritious! “Food for Sport” is all about enjoyable, real, and unprocessed food that work for athletes. It is fantastic to have local distribution partners like Spud, because we can get away with a much shorter shelf life, comparative to multinational companies making products in the same category. At the end of the day, Prima is about providing people with food that will make their athletic lifestyles even more enjoyable and fulfilling.