Geet Sheth is hoping to strike while the iron is hot.<\/p>\n
With Recipe Unlimited \u2014 an ownership organization which counts Harvey\u2019s, Swiss Chalet and the Keg among its 16 restaurants \u2014 banning plastic straws and the Ontario government exploring the same notion, the co-founder of Cambridge\u2019s Green Circle Dine Ware is looking to be a Canadian power player in the shift from plastic to paper straws.<\/p>\n
Ramping up production with a three-man crew, which includes himself and co-founder Ravi Kesh, to establish an inventory at the Sheldon Drive facility, the Guelph resident said talks are in the works with potential customers to try and break into the market soon.
\nTheir line of paper straws and eco-friendly dinnerware was recently launched at a restaurant expo in Toronto.<\/p>\n
The dinnerware is being manufactured at his father\u2019s plant in India, as the palm leaves used to produce the plates and bowls would begin to rot or grow fungus during shipment to Canada. However, it will be distributed here.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we\u2019re doing is very initial phases of, I would say, selling a product,\u201d Sheth said of the naturally biodegradable plates, dishes and their specialty, paper straws.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we\u2019re doing is sending out quotes and pricing, and a lot of people have special requirements in terms of, let\u2019s say, a wrapper or individually wrapping the straws or printing something on the straws. So we\u2019re just trying to entertain them depending on their needs. That\u2019s what we\u2019re doing at this point.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Green Circle may be a little behind globally in the paper straw party, they are one of the first in Canada to break into the industry. Sheth said it was important for him to do proper research into the product, as he\u2019s seen paper straws that just don\u2019t hold up to hot and cold drinks.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are not to the quality to sip through a drink for two to three hours,\u201d said Sheth, whose company was bolstered with $30,000 seed funding through Innovation Guelph\u2019s Fuel Injection program.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe wanted to address those issues and make sure that we don\u2019t have those issues with our products.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did the research in terms of getting the right paper and adhesive to make a straw that is FDA (Food and Drug Administration) compliant and doesn\u2019t jeopardize the safety of the people using it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Besides getting his product ready for sale, Sheth, a manufacturing engineer, is putting together what he hopes is a sound business plan. That will be crucial as more companies pile on to make paper straws, as the world has been shifting toward that practice ever since a video by marine biologist Christine Figgener was posted in 2015 of her team trying to remove a plastic straw from the nose of a sea turtle. It sparked a global cry for the ban of single-use plastics.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor manufacturers like us, the ideal scenario will be that we just sell it to the distributor and everybody can buy from the distributor, instead of us going to every restaurant and selling a small case of straws. It just takes a lot of work to do that and the distributors have that capacity,\u201d he said, noting he\u2019s been discussing plans with \u201ca couple\u201d distributors to sell the straws to smaller restaurants.<\/p>\n
Being local will also benefit distributors, because they don\u2019t have to order in bulk to make sales cost-effective, and they won\u2019t have to wait for product shipments.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a lot of potential clients at the Restaurants Canada show. We had great exposure in the market, a lot of people at our booth asking, a lot of restaurants owners interested, too. We\u2019ve been reaching out to people and we have some deals we can hopefully close,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Geet Sheth is hoping to strike while the iron is hot. With Recipe Unlimited \u2014 an ownership organization which counts Harvey\u2019s, Swiss Chalet and the Keg among its 16 restaurants \u2014 banning plastic straws and the Ontario government exploring the same notion, the co-founder of Cambridge\u2019s Green Circle Dine Ware is looking to be a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[15632,12388],"supplier":[15631],"class_list":["post-62229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-dinnerware","tag-tableware","supplier-green-circle-dine-ware"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62229\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62229"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=62229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}