This former field hockey star scored a winning bone broth recipe

Credit: Lindsay Siu

Connor Meakin, 29

Founder and CEO
BLUEBIRD PROVISIONS INC.

Life Story: For someone so young, Connor Meakin has led a few different lives. The Vancouver native played 45 games for Canada’s national field hockey team while completing a psychology degree at both UVic and UBC in 2012. When Meakin hung up his cleats, he took an internship at a small startup called Hootsuite, becoming one of the social media management firm’s early full-time employees. After a couple of years learning under Ryan Holmes and company, he knew he wanted to run his own business; he just wasn’t sure what it would be. Then in 2014 came a blessing in disguise: a foot injury while he trained to run ultra-marathons competitively.

“I was kind of frustrated with Western medicine not having a solution to fix my foot, and I looked into the more natural ways of eating and healing the body, and bone broth was one of the things I found,” says Meakin, who launched Bluebird Provisions and its first product, Pure Bone Broth, in 2016, using his own savings. Bone broth is made by simmering bones in water to create a soup-like mixture that can be sipped, but Meakin’s product only uses bones that are on their way to the landfill. It’s the first and only organic bone broth to be sold in grocery stores nationwide.

The Bottom Line: Bluebird’s bone broth now sells in 140 stores across Canada, including grocers like Choices Markets, Urban Fare and Whole Foods Market Inc., and it’s aiming to move into the U.S. by 2019. The company’s annual revenue is well into six figures.

My favourite book is…
The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen. I’ve been reading a lot of Alan Watts recently, too.

What’s your biggest regret?
Worrying about regrets when you’re this young is a waste of energy.

#30under30