Primal Sisters – Tamara Wensley

Tamara Wensley, Metis, grew up with her family in Errington, BC. She started the business, Primal Sisters, with her sister back in 2015.

Tamara Wensley, Metis, grew up with her family in Errington, BC. She started the business, Primal Sisters, with her sister back in 2015. The business was inspired by a childhood favorite snack, pork crisps. Due to health reasons, she needed a change in her diet and she discovered other ways of eating. This type of eating is called Paleo Diet.  Paleo includes only eating protein rich meats, vegetables, and fruits. Tamara missed eating chips, so she came up with meat chips. Initially making only for herself and her family she is now selling her products in over 125 stores across British Columbia.

As an Indigenous Woman Entrepreneur, she proudly has 100% control in all aspects of her business from producing to packaging to distributing. She doesn’t outsource any part of her business. This enables her to be as creative as she wants with what she is producing. Having complete control of her business is amazingly rewarding, she says, but it does make balancing her work life and home life more difficult.

Building a business doesn’t come easily and Tamara has overcome a lot of hurdles. She experienced family and partnership disagreements which was very difficult. Other hurdles included the COVID-19 shutdowns, government regulations in the meat industry, and the rapid growth of her business. Fast growth may not seem like an obstacle, however she needed to make sure she had the quantity of product that she promised to stores. The future for Primal Sisters includes expansion to have her product in stores across Canada.

Advice Tamara would give to new entrepreneurs is to ‘know your market and margins.’ For struggling entrepreneurs, she says its important to ‘know when it’s time to step back and take a realistic look at what you are doing, sometimes you just need to start fresh. It could be a phase, so don’t give up!’ Tamara is grateful for the support from NEDC with her start-up and into through the growth phases since she started in 2015.