A preliminary market intelligence survey informed us that more members of the foodservice industry would be willing to take up dry beans as an ingredient if they had access to consistent, reliable information about product origins, general cooking quality, food applications available for each bean class, and the differences in quality between canned and dry varieties of each bean class.

Many respondents also indicated that having staff trained in bean cooking would increase bean uptake across the industry. For instance, we learned from culinary professionals who teach that few have enough time to properly teach bean cooking in their courses or programs.

We also conducted quality testing, comparing Canadian dry beans to a well-regarded, high-quality heirloom bean control used in the US. The results indicate that Canadian beans don’t greatly differ in quality from US beans. However, we did note quality variations between Canadian suppliers, which suggests that some – particularly those supplying beans to the foodservice industry – may benefit from training in best storage practices to ensure the high quality.

Based on the input we received from the market intelligence survey, PRK also developed several applications to highlight Canadian bean quality in the foodservice space. These applications can be developed further to produce bean ingredients available directly from foodservice suppliers, or they can be prepared on site, from scratch, at foodservice establishments.