BeaverTails limited time menu items in collaboration with Kraft Dinner Canada: the KD Takeover BeaverDog and KD Takeover Poutine. Image credit: BeaverTails
Over the past three decades, BeaverTails creative director Tina Serrao has learned a thing or two about breaking through the noise. This week, the Ottawa-based business did just that, announcing a partnership with Kraft Dinner. Throughout the summer, Beavertails will serve two items as part of the new collaboration: the KD Takeover BeaverDog, a hot dog wrapped in BeaverTail pastry and topped with Kraft Dinner and ketchup; and the KD Takeover Poutine, a twist on the Canadian favourite featuring, of course, more KD.According to Serrao, the company is always looking to do something outside the box.“We have four words: Canadian, ritual, authentic and quirky,” she told OBJ. “Those are what we live and die by. So the quirky part … everything we do always has a little bit of a twist. Why can’t we have fun and play?”BeaverTails was founded in 1978, and had already established a reputation by the time Serrao got involved 30 years ago. At the time, she said the company was essentially bootstrapping, working with virtually non-existent budgets. As a result, she never approached promotion in the traditional way, by buying ads or placing billboards. It was partially out of necessity, she said, but over the years it became clear that the company didn’t need to do things the normal way. “Word of mouth was a big deal,” she said. “(Founder Grant Hooker) would always make sure that somebody who came to town was going to try a BeaverTail. The mayor of Ottawa was going to have a BeaverTail. We’ve always been in that world of word of mouth. We didn’t pay for advertising. We didn’t have money, but we also didn’t pay for advertising because it didn’t do anything. It didn’t drive up sales. We had no return on investment.”Years later, she said that’s still the case. When the company hired someone a few years ago to put together a series of advertising campaigns over the course of 12 months, Serrao said it did nothing for the bottom line. But most of all, it didn’t feel right. “It didn’t touch us, didn’t budge the needle,” she said. “It didn’t feel authentic, real, all the things that BeaverTails stood for. So we said, ‘Okay. We know who we are. We know exactly where we live. We live in an authentic moment and we have to make sure we pull up to every authentic moment we can.’”Tina Serrao is creative director at BeaverTails. Image suppliedWhile social media has changed the game, Serrao said the approach remains largely the same. Getting BeaverTails into people’s hands is still the most important goal, though these days social media influencers are included alongside key audiences like journalists and politicians. To break through the noise, she prefers to steer away from popular trends in the food industry. “It’s really hard to not follow the trend, but the minute you do, all you are is the trend. We make our own trends,” she said. “My whole goal is, do not look inside. Take it outside of the food world and see what’s happening. Look at fashion, look at pop culture, talk about everything else and get your influences from there.”Over the years, the company has experimented with various limited-time products, from a maple-bacon pastry to fried chicken on fried dough, and popular one-off flavours like the Cherry B and Blue Nomster. It has also collaborated with other brands. A few years ago it used Koolaid powders to colour and flavour icing, and partnered with Polar Ice Vodka and White Water Brewery on alcoholic products.More than anything, Serrao said BeaverTails’s most successful ideas have been those that lean into the brand's Canadian roots. BeaverTails trucks are strategically located near winter activity spots like ski hills and the Rideau Canal Skateway. Its shops are outfitted with red antler decorations and plaid wallpaper. The company has a Bring Your Own Plaid policy for staff. New customers can ring a “First BeaverTail” bell when they pick up a pastry in store. All of these quirky traditions, she said, are rooted in the brand’s quintessentially Canadian image. “I always feel so humbled when I say we are Canada’s tourist brand. It was given to us on some strange silver platter. It all just unfolded and we created this natural creation of clients accepting us and us accepting what the clients wanted,” she said. “You have to understand your customer. It starts there. I think if you understand the soul of the brand, it’s really about doubling down on what is the soul, what is the heart, what does your client want, how do you want your client to perceive you?”The Kraft Dinner collaboration came from a similar place. According to Serrao, it was the BeaverTails team that reached out to KD, which responded with more enthusiasm than expected. “The whole team from Kraft Dinner descended on us,” she said. “It was hilarious. They came in and the chef had on his smock and it was like, I don’t think you know that we’re not that serious here, we’re pretty casual. But they were amazing.”The original idea was to incorporate KD’s signature powdered cheese as a topping, but as luck would have it, Serrao said KD had just launched a restaurant product that would allow BeaverTails to whip up the mac and cheese and serve it with hot dogs and poutine. The result is exactly what Serrao is always striving toward: quirky and Canadian. “It’s a little polarizing,” she said. “Some people love it, some people hate it. But that’s kind of the fun of it. Here’s this Canadian icon, which people outside of Canada don’t even realize is Canadian. How could we not do something so Canadian?”At the end of the day, Serrao said she’s always looking to bring something fun and new to loyal customers. She often reminds her team that even established brands can fall at any time. To keep BeaverTails going, she said they need to take good care of it. “We’re a piece of fried dough,” she said. “It’s kind of like a croissant. Anybody can make a great croissant, but do you know any branded croissant? Not really. But we’re a nationally branded piece of dough. We shouldn’t exist. It’s so funny, in the best of ways. Nobody needs a BeaverTail but everybody wants one. We sit in the best place.”
