Source: coastreporter.net
Diana and Robert Rae of Canada Hemp Foods Ltd. talk to the Dragons
during their pitch on CBC’s the Dragon’s Den, which will be posted on
the web as a bonus episode on April 3.
A local brother and sister team tempted the taste buds of Dragons with some special seeds from the Sunshine Coast and audiences will see how they made out on April 3, during an on-line showing of CBC’s the Dragons’ Den.
Robert and Diana Rae of Canada Hemp Foods Ltd. pitched their hemp seed, oil and powder products to the Dragons months ago, but they have been sworn to secrecy about the outcome until their on-line bonus pitch is released on April 3.
“We can talk about a lot of things but we can’t say if we got a deal,” Robert told Coast Reporter this week.
He said he and his sister asked the Dragons for $150,000 for 25 per cent of their company. The money would fund expansion of their product line into more Canadian markets like Ontario.
Right now Canada Hemp Foods Inc. has products in more than 200 stores across Canada and the U.S.
“We really just didn’t have the financing or the wherewithal to expand more and we felt the marketing expertise from one of the Dragons would help,” Robert said.
Diana described the experience of pitching their product to the Dragons as “just terrific.”
“You get on set and you have the five of them in front of you and surprisingly I didn’t find them nearly as intimidating in person as you would imagine,” she said.
The pair pushed the pot question out into the open by bringing a fake marijuana plant on stage with them, Robert said.
He explained marijuana is a distant cousin of THC-free hemp, which contains none of the psychotropic elements found in marijuana.
Food-quality hemp seeds are harvested from a completely different strain of plant.
Robert’s passionate about the product and its health benefits, which he has experienced first hand.
Robert suffered from extremely itchy skin after undergoing numerous chemotherapy treatments, radiation therapy and stem-cell replacement to rid him of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
He also gained about 40 pounds throughout the ordeal.
In 2005, on friend Wally Venechuk’s advice, he tried adding hemp seeds to his diet.
Within days he felt better and his skin condition was healed in a matter of weeks. Robert also lost the extra weight he had gained within a few months, without making any other changes to his diet or lifestyle.
Convinced of the benefits, in 2006 he and Venechuk launched Canada Hemp Foods Ltd. with the tag line “Hemp is proof that Mother Nature loves us.” “It’s the cure to a lot of things. I could go on for hours, but just in a synopsis, it’s a very green plant, it produces more oxygen than almost any other plant per square foot and it’s now proving to have a lot of medicinal properties,” Robert said. “When you have a plant that can produce 30 per cent protein out of its seeds that’s remarkable, and it also produces a lot of the healthy fats we need–the omegas.”
Robert said he spent some of his pitch educating the Dragons and he’s hopeful those who watch the show will also learn more about the “miracle plant.”
See the Rae’s pitch on-line at www.cbc.ca/dragonsden/ on April 3 and enter for chances to win free product from Canada Hemp Foods Ltd. until the pitch is posted through their website atwww.canadahempfoods.com.
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