North Saanich-based cooking-supplies company Epicure has closed after 34 years, leaving thousands of its sales associates in the dark as to what will happen next.
Sales people with the company received a notice sent from an email address associated with insolvency firm MNP Ltd. saying that Epicure would cease operations “immediately” on Jan. 24.
Epicure, which employed up to 175 staff at its North Saanich headquarters as recently as 2017, carried hundreds of products, including dips, rubs, seasonings and cookware.
The email from MNP, attributed to company founder and owner Sylvie Rochette, said Epicure was unable to recover from the financial challenges that have affected the direct-sales sector in recent years.
“This was not a choice made lightly, but one born from the weight of financial challenges many in the industry have experienced following the pandemic,” the email said.
Like other direct-sales companies such as Tupperware, Avon and Mary Kay, Epicure relied on a network of sales associates — called consultants — to host parties where guests can try out the company’s products, look at catalogues, socialize and shop.
Those promoting the products get a share of the sales revenue. Top-performing consultants could win overseas trips and some reportedly earned six-figure incomes. The vast majority of consultants were women.
But that approach to sales — selling goods through gatherings in people’s homes — became difficult during the pandemic.
The company, which expanded its business to the U.S. in 2019 and reported having over 20,000 consultants in 2021, made two leadership-level hires as recently as last year.
Epicure CEO Amelia Warren was quoted in an October press release saying that the company had major expansion plans in the U.S. in 2025 “to make healthy cooking and staying on track easy.” In recent years, the company has offered gluten-free meal preparation kits free of preservatives, artificial colours and high-fructose corn syrup.
Epicure came from humble origins in a Victoria basement.
In the early 1990s, Rochette put together four blends of spices to sell and made $286 on her first day offering her wares at a Central Saanich market.
When her business of selling spices, jellies, oils, dips and rum mix took off, Rochette moved operations out of her basement.
The company, which was first incorporated as Victorian Epicure Inc., initially did business wholesale but switched to a direct-sales model in 1996. Its products were assembled in a facility in James Bay. The company moved to a 33-hectare property in North Saanich with two warehouses and an office in 2003.
Epicure reported about $50 million in annual sales in 2012.
In an interview with the Times Colonist in 2007, Rochette said she wanted to replicate her early success at farmers markets at a larger scale.
“I can’t clone myself but I can clone the way I sell the product,” she said.
Rochette could not be immediately reached for comment Saturday.
As of Friday, the content on Epicure’s website had been removed.
Consultants say their back-end website is no longer accessible and staff at head office were no longer answering phones on Friday.
The company’s social media presence has been wiped.
Some members of Epicure’s leadership team, including Warren and chief financial officer Tom Oxbury, have taken their social media profiles off the internet.
The email sent to consultants by MNP said more information about what will happen to Epicure will come in the next five business days.
>>> To comment on this article, write a letter to the editor: [email protected]
