When you eat fruit cake this holiday season, you're supporting local business

Maybe you’re a fan of fruit cake, maybe you aren’t. But consider this. Pretty much everybody eating fruit cake from BC to Newfoundland is eating something that was produced right here in Chilliwack. Pragash Govender with Sandel Foods in Chilliwack says they produce and ship over 4 million pounds of fruit cake mix every year…they’re the only ones in Canada doing it, and have been doing it for 38 years!

“They’ve been making fruit cake right from the very start.  They make it the very traditional way, which is to preserve the fruit with sugar.  The mix we produce, the fruit in there is 72% sugar.”

She says they source the ingredients from all over the world. Some of the mix takes 17 days to process, some can be made as quickly as 3 or 4 days. Sandel Foods employs over 80 people here locally, and processes not just fruit cake, but things like pie filling and glazes as well.

Govender says it’s a good news story for the local economy, and besides…a lot of people LOVE fruit cake or they wouldn’t be selling so much of it.  She says it comes in a lot of different flavours and can be souped up in a lot of different ways (rum anyone?) so it wouldn’t be hard to find a fruit cake you like.