Jamaica’s famous traditional spice is getting mainstream treatment

By Stephanie Pollard

With his love of jerk spice, Mark Saldeba is determined to share the Caribbean flavour with the world. Through his company, World Famous Jerk Inc., Saldeba hopes to bring jerk into the homes of families across Canada. He spoke with Sway about his culinary vision.

SWAY: What is World Famous Jerk Inc.?
MARK SALDEBA: Our company manufactures jerk products and brings them to market. We have a signature product, the World Famous Jerk dry rub. It is also the base of all our meat products. We are a manufacturing and production plant, we don’t have retail outlets.

SWAY: Why do you think that it’s important to sell jerk-flavoured goods to the mainstream market?
We, as a community, haven’t really brought to the mainstream one of our main products, which is our jerk spice. What I wanted to do with World Famous Jerk is bring it to the commercial level. I think we have a lot of people in the community who love spice and who can enjoy products with jerk, from white Canadians to Asian and South Asian communities.

SWAY: Is it true that World Famous Jerk is already working with Pizza Pizza to come out with a jerk topping?
We’ve cooked with Beachgrove Foods, which is one of the largest pizza-topping makers in North America. We’ve been in their labs for the last eight months developing jerk pepperoni.
Beachgrove does all the toppings for about seven of the top pizza franchises in the country, but they’ve also been the ones who’ve sliced and packaged our pepperoni to go to market. We’ve been working with two very large spice companies and two very large food-processing companies.

SWAY: When can people start ordering jerk chicken as a pizza topping?
It’s really down to when the pizza franchises would like to go to market. For Pizza Pizza, there’s a lot of red tape and a lot of things they have to consider. However, for other pizza places, like 241 Pizza or Pizza Nova, they can come out to market almost right away. We’re there in the fight, trying to get the major product distribution for the pizza toppings right now.

To learn more about World Famous Jerk Inc., call 647-836-9000