After countless trips to international grocers and markets in search of rare cooking spices and herbs, Calgary husband and wife duo Colin Leach and Kelci Hind decided the city needed its own dedicated spice store. “It started as an idea. My wife and I were cooking a lot and getting interested in Indian food and Mexican food and different world cuisines. Along with that comes searching for ingredients around the city, and spices – in particular – came up,” explains Colin. “There were trips to Mexican grocery stores and Indian grocery stores and looking for Middle Eastern grocery stores and places to get unusual things. At some point the idea came up that maybe it would be cool to combine all those things into one location and specialize in only spices.”
At the time, Colin was working as a copywriter while Kelci was working as a registered nurse. The original plan was to run the business as a side hobby on evenings and weekends. But as demand increased and business grew, the couple decided it was time to open up their own brick-and-mortar store. “The primary, original idea was just to have everything. If it’s culinary and it’s a spice, we try to have it,” explains Colin. “If it’s rare, we’ve got it. If it’s common, we’ve got a good quality version of it. We wanted to have all of the basics for spice blends covered, too, as well as our own inventions and concoctions.”
Located in the heart of Inglewood along the busy 9th Avenue stretch, The Silk Road Spice Merchant stocks around 250 different spices and herbs from all around the world. The spices and herbs are analyzed, quality tested and packaged by a top secret list of nearly a dozen spice suppliers from across North America before arriving at the Silk Road to be sold. “It’s such a unique concept, and not just in Calgary – but there’s nothing really quite like it anywhere in Canada,” Colin says. “I figured that if we built something that we think is really cool, the chances are that other people will also think that it is cool.”
