The Importance of a Dedicated Gluten Free Facility

As many of you know, Kinnikinnick Foods is a dedicated gluten free manufacturer. Since 1991, we've been Gluten Free and we always will be. Not only that, we do not out source the production of our products to anyone. We have complete control over the production of our products. I know how important this is to us, but I'm quite interested to know how important it is to you.

Why am I asking this? There's a couple of reasons actually. With all the publicity around gluten free recently, we are starting to see a lot more companies, both big and small, jump on the GF bandwagon. Some will have dedicated facilities, some will not and some will outsource production of their products to others. Some will get it right but some won't and that's a concern.

Mostly it's due to several experiences I've had over the last couple of years that really bring the issue into focus for me.

A Fog of Gluten
We are doing some testing of new equipment at a non-GF facility to see if that type of equipment can be used for our products. Our first day of trials was quite a reminder of why we are a dedicated facility. Flour dust hung like a fog in the air; it clung to our clothes and skin like glue (gluten!) , and I actually had a reaction later that day as I wasn't wearing a mask. Of course, the trial products went into the trash at the end of the day and we actually had to change clothes and wash our shoes before returning to Kinnikinnick as we were a contamination risk. I just don't know how anyone could make GF & non-GF products in the same building. Flour dust is -everywhere-

Think It's Clean Do You?
This also brought back memories of when we opened our K2 facility. We bought this 120,000 sq ft building and it's equipment when the largest producer of private label (wheat based) cookies in western Canada went out of business in 2005. When it was producing wheat based products, this facility was AIB (American Institute of Baking) certified with a consistently high score on it's regular audits. In other words, it was a very "clean" facility. However, before we made a single product in this new facility of ours, we spent over 6 months decontaminating the building and equipment. Every nook and cranny of the building was pressure washed, twice. Ceiling, girders, ducting, walls; all were washed. One week, the entire building had the electricity shut down so we could wash the lights, electrical conduit and instrument panels. Each piece of equipment was broken down to it's constituent parts and every nut, bolt and gear washed clean.

We were fortunate enough to be able to hire some of the employees of the previous company who knew the equipment. Being new to the gluten free world, it was very instructive for them to take apart the AIB certified, "clean" equipment and find wheat flour caked in places that were impossible to see and even harder to clean. Many of these places inside equipment would be in contact with anything produced in that equipment. Yikes. They quickly became gluten detectives, probing every bit of our equipment to ensure we could be certain this equipment was as clean as new.

We had the same experience in 2007 when we bought a used waffle production line. There were places in that machine that could only be cleaned of contamination by a complete tear down of the parts of the machine. I have some video which I'll dig up and post shortly of just how bad it really was.

Personally, as a result of these experiences and because I am a celiac who actually eats some products from companies other than Kinnikinnick(!), I have a much greater sense of wariness when I see "manufactured in a facility that contains wheat." From a company perspective, I'd like every manufacturer of GF products to go to the lengths and expense we do. I know that some do already but some don't. As a consumer, it's tough to know just what you can expect. Hopefully, the new FDA regulations (if/when they are implemented) will bring some clarity to the issue. The issue in Canada is a bit clearer due to our regulations, but it can still be hard to know what to think.

We're not going to change the way we do things here at Kinnikinnick, because we believe it's the right thing to do and we think it's important to you. Let us know.

FYI... You can read more about our ongoing, daily procedures and testing for gluten on a previous post here

Major Store Announcement & Store Finder Upgrade

In what is one of the biggest gluten free product placements ever in a major main line grocery chain, we are pleased to announce that 14 Kinnikinnick frozen products are now or will shortly be available in 375 Stop & Shop & 180 Giant Food stores. These stores are located throughout Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, New York, Maryland, Delaware, DC, Virginia, western Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

The products available will include:

• White Sandwich Bread
• Brown Sandwich Bread
• Italian White Tapioca Rice Bread
• Pizza crusts
• English Muffins
• Cinnamon Sugar Donuts
• Chocolate Dip Donuts
• Vanilla Glazed Donuts
• New York Style Bagels
• Cinnamon Raisin Bagels
• Chocolate Chip Muffins
• Blueberry Muffins
• Hamburger Buns
• Hot Dog Buns

The number of products carried by each store will vary depending on store size. All of these 14 products will be available to all stores so if the store is not carrying an item you want, you may be able to get the store to bring it in for you. Talk to the store manager.

If you're not near one of these stores don't forget to check out our Store Finder. We now have almost 3500 stores listed carrying our products (and these are only the ones we know about). If you know of a store that is carrying our products that isn't listed, let us know by dropping us an email to webmaster@kinnikinnick.com

Google Maps Integration



We've also just incorporated Google Maps into our Store Finder . Once you've selected the store you're interested, just click the Show Map button and you will see the store's location. We plan on adding driving directions in the near future.

We've Finally Gotten Rid Of All The Nuts!

For a while our staff was quite worried when we said all the nuts would have to go...

We are pleased to announce that as of June 15, 2009, we are going entirely nut free in both of our facilities. This is one of the biggest product policy changes since we made most of our products dairy free. We've been peanut free for several years now but this move will eliminate all tree nuts from our product line as well. On the down side, this will force the discontinuation of our lemon cranberry almond and double chocolate almond cookies but will open up our complete product line to thousands (millions?) of people with nut allergies. We will also be announcing a couple of new cookie varieties to replace the 2 we are discontinuing. More on that in a future post.

For those of you with severe nut allergies please keep in mind that there will still be products in the market that were produced prior to us going nut free. Look for products with the following Best Before dates or later:

* Soft Baked Goods (breads, buns, bagels, donuts, etc) - 12/15/2009
* Cookies, Mixes and Ingredients - 06/15/2010

Fire Up The Barbeque

We are very pleased to announce today that our new Hamburger and Hot Dog Buns are now available.

If you've been reading this blog for any period of time, you'll know that we are always looking to create better products which are more widely available.


We've known for a long time that our Hot Dog and Hamburger Buns were less than ideal; they were too big, the tops flaked off, they tended to be quite crumbly and just kind of hard to use. Well no longer. We've done a reformulation and reformat.

Both the Hamburger and Hot Dog Buns are now virtually flake and crumble free, they are thinner, easier to eat and toast great. You may not believe this but these buns are "one-handers". That is to say you can eat your hot dog or hamburger start to finish with one hand. No mess, no fuss, just great taste.

While we reduced the height of our Hamburger Buns, we wanted to keep the package weight the same, so you now get 5 buns instead of 4 for the same price. Yes you read that correctly, an extra bun, no extra charge.

Many of you who don't buy directly from us may not have even realized that we sold Hot Dog Buns. That's because we couldn't make enough to meet the demand from stores. Now we can and stores have been anxiously awaiting this launch. Look for stores carrying both varieties of the new and improved buns within the next couple of weeks.

For those who can't wait, you can order directly from us to make sure you've got what you need for the May long weekend (May 18 in Canada, May 25 in the U.S.)

Grab the charcoal, the fixin's (and the GF beer for those so inclined) and have a great summer.

It's Hip To Be Square

Many of you may have noticed the It's Hip To Be Square image on the main page of our website and have wondered what it's all about.

We've just completed almost a year of product development and equipment design to allow us to introduce our new Square Pizza Crust. These crusts are not only square but we've made some formulation changes to improve the taste and texture as well. In anticipation of the question "Why change them? I love them the way they are." I'll try to explain why we've made the change.


Why Square?

Over the last year I have received dozens (hundreds?) of emails similar the the one that arrived this morning:

"My local health food store keeps telling me that they can't get your pizza crust [...] What is the problem?"

Many of you are probably aware of the Donut Saga, which was our struggle to keep up with demand for donuts, our search for equipment and a formulation that would work with the equipment and the response we received to the new donut. Essentially, Kinnikinnick Pizza Crust has suffered from the same supply/demand problem. We simply couldn't make them fast enough. Each crust was formed by hand and baked in small batches. We've known this was an issue for about 18 months and began the process of looking for new equipment which could produce our crusts in a more automated fashion. However, like the donuts, there simply isn't any pizza crust equipment available that would work with our gluten free pizza dough. About 12 months ago, our product development team sat down with our facilities staff and I said,

"OK, let's build our own pizza line...

"From scratch."

All things considered, they took it pretty well.

One of the things that quickly became apparent was that it would be virtually impossible to automate a round pizza crust with our dough. Most traditional wheat based equipment uses a system which picks up the excess dough created when cutting a round shape. Our doughs are simply too soft for us to automate this. We knew our only option was to get "square". We had some concerns about consumer acceptance but we found that a web search for "square pizza" returned almost 60,000 matches. Square pizza is quite common.

Why Reformulate?

We always get nervous when we reformulate a product. We know that some people will be upset with the changes we make but we always make changes for solid reasons.

As with the donuts, some changes were necessary simply to make the dough work with the equipment we were using (building). These kinds of changes often have most impact on texture. We make changes to get the required physical properties in the raw dough. It turns out that the changes needed with the pizza crust have improved the texture substantially. The new crusts are crispy yet have a nice chewiness which is very similar to a wheat flour crust.

When we look at make major changes to a product we take look at our product comment files and see if there are additional issues we could address to make the product even better. The biggest complaint with the old crusts was that they were "too sweet". I must admit that I was not a huge fan of the old crusts for this very reason. The second issue was that they were "too thick" although thickness was quite variable due to the fact that they were hand formed. On average, we agreed that they were thicker than we'd like.

We've addressed both these issues with the new formulation. The crusts are substantially less sweet and thinner. And since we are always looking to improve the nutritional value of our products we've made them better for you.

The nutritional highlights for a single serving (1 crust):

• 10 Grams of Fiber
• 7 Grams of Protein
• Only 75 Grams of Carbs
• Vitamin Enriched

One thing I'd like to note for those few people with pea allergies is that the new formulation does contain pea protein.


Drum Roll Please

As of yesterday, we started full production of the new square pizza crusts. You'll be seeing them arrive shortly in your orders directly from us. Shipments to distributors will start this week so they will be showing up in stores in 2-3 weeks. The automation of the line should very quickly eliminate the shortages that stores are seeing and make the new Square Pizza Crust available to even more people.

The Future

We will continue hand forming 10 inch crusts as we only offer this size in the direct to home market. The other thing this new equipment allows us to do is to look at producing a larger, family size crust that can be produced in large quantities for mass distribution. We think 10 inch is a little small for a true family sized pizza so we'd be interested in what size you'd like to see. Just post a comment below and let us know what you think.

You can also look for new packaging which will begin appearing in late April. The 4 crusts will be wrapped in packages of 2 to help preverse freshness and will be available in a recyclable cardboard box.

In Closing

I really like these new crusts. Last night, I made pizza from the first production run of the new formulation for a non-celiac friend of mine. His comment was "This is awesome."

We think so. We hope you do to.

Remember, as Huey Lewis says It's Hip To Be Square

Kinnikinnick Donuts Now Free of Artificial Flavours and Colours

Happy New Year to all.

We are pleased to announce that as of last December, we began producing our own donut icing. This has allowed us to completely remove the artificial colours and flavours from our donut line. We are now using pure cocoa and natural maple flavours in their place.

We did not want to be in the icing business but our supplier was not willing to make the change so we felt we had to do it ourselves. While many of our customers aren't concerned about artificial ingredients, we know that there are lots who are. Additionally, one of our major distributors discontinued the two varieties with the artificial ingredients, making them unavailable in many stores.

With this change, we expect that the distributor will reintroduce the two varieties and we would hope to see them become much more widely available in the coming months.

Please note that there may still be some boxes out in stores which contain the old ingredients. All boxes with the new formulation will be labeled with a new ingredient panel. Once we have used our existing box inventory, new boxes will be printed with the new ingredient list.

Keeping "Gluten Free" Free Of Gluten

Recently, there has been quite a bit of press regarding hidden gluten due to cross contamination in some products. A post on the Celiac ListServ requested responses from producers of gluten free products and this is ours.

Kinnikinnick recognized from the start that it was virtually impossible to manufacture gluten free products in a non-dedicated facility. Flour dust is incredibly difficult to control, even under the best GMP (good manufacturing practices). Of course, being a Canadian manufacturer, we've always operated in an environment where gluten free has been regulated by law. For at least 17 years, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) has set the accepted minimum standard for a product to be labeled gluten free at 20ppm. The rule may have been in place for longer but that's how long we've been in business so it's a rule we've always been required to follow.

We answer some important questions:

Are you a dedicated gluten free facility?
Yes. Both our facilities are dedicated to the production of gluten free products. We even supply our staff with gluten free breads, buns, cookies and snacks as they are not allowed to bring in their own.

Do you outsource or co-pack?
No. All of the products we make are entirely controlled by us and produced in our two facilities. It's not much good to operate a gluten free facility and then subcontract out to facilities that aren't.

Do you test for gluten?
All of our ingredient suppliers are required to provide allergen statements which include gluten. However, this is only a start. In 2005, we opened our new in-house laboratory. Every lot of all of our major ingredients is tested for gluten using the RidaQuick Gliadin test which detects to 2.5 ppm Gliadin (corresponding to 5 ppm gluten). We also employ the RidaScreen FAST gliadin ELISA test for ingredients which do not test well with the RidaQuick test and as verification of the RidaQuick testing protocols. These are the same tests that the University of Nebraska and the CFIA uses (at least to the level of accuracy). We also do 3rd party verification of our test results with an outside lab.We test all of our minor ingredients on a schedule based on risk and an additional set of random spot checks. An additional important factor to consider is that many manufacturers rely on quick tests which have a threshold of detection of 50-100ppm for wheat only. The tests used in our lab also detect barley and rye proalamines (the harmful proteins) to levels down to 4ppm.

We at Kinnikinnick Foods are pleased to see that there is finally some public attention being drawn to hidden gluten and gluten cross contamination in products labeled gluten free. We do our very best to ensure our customers have the safest, tastiest products available. It is our hope that this issue will prompt some finalization of the FDA proposed regulation on gluten free labeling. While we know that there are companies out there who take the appropriate precautions, we look forward to a time when -all- "gluten free" manufacturers are required to meet the same standards so gluten free consumers know exactly what they are getting.

We are also in the process of a repackaging program which will more clearly identify other allergens to help our customers with additional allergies or intolerances make informed choices.