Ottawa ice-cream makers, bakers grapple with soaring vanilla costs

Vanilla is a staple inany baker's pantry, but thoselittle bottles of extract cost alot more than theyused to after a cyclone last March in Madagascar wiped out crops.

On top of that, food manufacturers are increasingly switching from artificial to pure vanilla.

The result? Demand for vanilla is outstripping supply.

Sheila Lynch and PascaleBerthiaumeuse the bean every day in large quantities. Lynchco-ownsThree Tarts Bakeshopand Berthiaumeowns Pascale's Ice Cream.

They both say they'redoing things differently as a result of the soaring cost.

'It's crazy'

"We go through probably a gallon [of vanilla extract] every three weeks ... and that's almost $500 a gallon," Lynch told CBC Radio's Ottawa Morning Thursday.

"I was at Costco and the woman in front of me was buying [a small bottle], and the person at the cash said, 'You know this is $49 now?' Because people don't realize," she added. "It's crazy."

Lynch said her way to cope was to raiseprices at the bakery.

"I really like [vanilla]in there. That's the problem, is that [the cost of] chocolate, vanilla, nuts, cream and butterhave all gone up ... Topped with our minimum wage going up as well, we had to increase our prices," she said.

"I would rather do that, and if they're not happy with usthen we'll go out of businessinstead of not having the product."

Big buy

Berthiaume said sheuses vanilla in all her ice cream flavours, and while she used to put three vanillapods in every batch, she nowuses half that amount.

She's also comeup with another solution.

Berthiaumeapproached other local producers of frozen treats,including Stella Luna Gelato, Moo ShuIce Cream and The Merry Dairy, and asked them to go in together on a $6,000 order of vanilla beans.

"I said, 'Do you guys want to group buy so we can have betterbuying power?' So we went ahead and bought tons of vanilla. And in my head I was like, these [beans] better be beautiful and not dry and get across the borderall theselittle things that are stressing you out," Berthiaume said.

"So I'm really happy they landed in Ottawa, and they're beautiful."