Ottawa ice-cream makers, bakers grapple with soaring vanilla costs

Vanilla is a staple in any baker's pantry, but those little bottles of extract cost a lot more than they used to after a cyclone last March in Madagascar wiped out crops.

On top of that, food manufacturers are increasingly switching from artificial to pure vanilla.

The result? Demand for vanilla is outstripping supply.

Sheila Lynch and Pascale Berthiaume use the bean every day in large quantities. Lynch co-owns Three Tarts Bakeshop and Berthiaume owns Pascale's Ice Cream.

They both say they're doing things differently as a result of the soaring cost.

'It's crazy'

"We go through probably a gallon [of vanilla extract] every three weeks ... and that's almost $500 a gallon," Lynch told CBC Radio's Ottawa Morning Thursday.

"I was at Costco and the woman in front of me was buying [a small bottle], and the person at the cash said, 'You know this is $49 now?' Because people don't realize," she added. "It's crazy."

Lynch said her way to cope was to raise prices at the bakery.

"I really like [vanilla] in there. That's the problem, is that [the cost of] chocolate, vanilla, nuts, cream and butter have all gone up ... Topped with our minimum wage going up as well, we had to increase our prices," she said.

"I would rather do that, and if they're not happy with us then we'll go out of business instead of not having the product."

Big buy

Berthiaume said she uses vanilla in all her ice cream flavours, and while she used to put three vanilla pods in every batch, she now uses half that amount.

She's also come up with another solution.

Berthiaume approached other local producers of frozen treats, including Stella Luna Gelato, Moo Shu Ice Cream and The Merry Dairy, and asked them to go in together on a $6,000 order of vanilla beans.

"I said, 'Do you guys want to group buy so we can have better buying power?' So we went ahead and bought tons of vanilla. And in my head I was like, these [beans] better be beautiful and not dry and get across the border — all these little things that are stressing you out," Berthiaume said.

"So I'm really happy they landed in Ottawa, and they're beautiful."