Noble Premium
Puts Bison Back on The Table BY ELIZABETH CHORNEY-BOOTH
Noble Premium Bison
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efore 2020, the Noble Premium Bison brand was unknown on the Canadian market. But suddenly, in those wild early months of the pandemic, the Millarvillebased company started showing up on store shelves. Now, two years after its retail launch, Noble’s bison products are available across Canada in major grocery retailers like Safeway, Sobeys, Co-op, and Costco. With its smart marketing and high-quality product, Noble Premium Bison seems to be a bit of an overnight success, but the brand’s quick rise is actually the result of years of industry experience from partners Kelly Long and Doug Griller, and a carefully laid-out business plan. Before getting into how Noble became one of the largest bison companies in North America, it’s important to know a 18 Culinaire | June 2022
little about the Canadian bison market. While bison has become a familiar menu item on restaurant menus in Alberta because of its ties to the land here, most of us still don’t include it on our local grocery lists, largely due to price and an unfamiliarity with the meat. Bison had a brief burst of popularity in the 1990s when it was billed as a leaner and more diet-conscious alternative to beef, but according to Long the market crashed completely in 2000 and keen bison entrepreneurs have been trying to build it back up since. “Bison is indigenous and the original regenerative animal that roamed not just in Canada but across North America,” Long says. “There's so much history and stories that go with bison. People look back at it and think of bison as being a sort of heritage meat.” Both Long and Griller have been
part of that move towards creating a sustainable bison market. Griller has been ranching bison for decades, and Long - who has a background in business and marketing - founded Carmen Creek Bison with her husband in the early ‘00s and eventually sold that company because of challenges in the market. When Griller approached Long to join forces to help move his supply of product in 2016, she knew that her marketing skills and his bison supply could make for a very successful company — if they built it in the right way. Successful food brands often come about when a producer has a great product that becomes popular, forcing them to scramble to ramp up production and distribution to keep up with demand, but Noble flipped that narrative around. Taking what she’d learned from running Carmen Creek, Long started by selling
