Chapman's Ice Cream Made a $200 Million Bet on Canadians, Will it Pay?

When tariffs landed in early 2025, most Canadian companies kept quiet and waited to see what would happen. Many are still sitting on the sidelines waiting for the old way of trade with the US to come back. Chapman's Ice Cream moved towards what Canadians wanted right away. The family sat down with each other, made three decisions in quick succession, and then told Canadians what they'd decided.

Chapman's did not profit from Canadian patriotism.

This is a story about what happens when a business decides its own margin is less important than Canadians ability to afford ice cream when everything else is gets expensive.

Chapman's bought the same American nuts for decades. Pecans from Georgia, almonds from California, walnuts from everywhere, and cherries from Michigan since 1995. Ashley Chapman, the company's COO, keeps the relationships straight by remembering the people involved. Not the contracts. The people. When he talks about his suppliers, he talks about their quality and their willingness to work with him, not their pricing.

In February 2025, Trump announced a 25 per cent tariff on Canadian goods. Trudeau, Canada's Prime Minister at the time, responded with retaliatory tariffs of 25% across the board. Within days the Chapmans paused all orders with US venders. Soon after, Chapman realized the pause was a preview of what happens when you depend on a US supply chain.

Nuts became uncompetitive overnight due to the 25% tariff. Chapman's had a basic problem to solve and only three choices. Raise prices and pass the cost to Canadians who were already feeling squeezed. Keep prices flat and take the hit on margin. Or stop buying American.

Ashley Chapman posted directly to Facebook and LinkedIn, no press release, no comms firm. He did not wait for counsel or ask shareholders for permission, because Chapman's has neither shareholders nor a board of directors. The board is three people: his mother, his father, and himself. When they need to make a decision, Ashley says, he walks fifteen feet down the hall and they have a quick chat.

Chapman announced three things:

First, Chapman's would absorb every immediate cost increase from the tariffs through the end of 2025 rather than raise prices. The Chapman family would make less money. That was fine if it helped Canadians afford ice cream.

Second, Chapman's was immediately starting to negotiate new supply contracts for nuts, fruits, and cherries outside the United States. Not temporary fixes. Multi-year agreements, two, three, five year contracts with European suppliers, meaning the American suppliers would be locked out for the foreseeable future.

During an interview with Bayshore Broadcasting, Chapman was blunt about their plans. Most publicly traded companies would never absorb margin, or be able to switch suppliers quickly because leadership is beholden to shareholders. Since Chapman's is a privately held company with no corporate board to answer to, they have the freedom to move fast.

"There's a certain hope," he told the station, "that us getting out there in front of this and saying, 'this is our commitment to Canadians,' will push other companies that have the same luxury to say, 'You know what? Times are getting tough but we're going to do the best that we can for Canadians.'"

When he talked to Toronto Life about changing suppliers, he revealed he'd signed multi-year agreements with European firms, most of them in Italy. "So even if the tariffs go away sooner or later, we will have signed multi-year agreements with European suppliers, and our American suppliers are still screwed. Talk about a kick in the nuts. It is what it is. If I'm happy with my new European suppliers, that's who I'm going to stick with."

Chapman's didn't make a temporary trade wartime measure to virtue signal to Canadians and position itself into the buy Canadian trend, they made a longterm structural decision to change a thirty year supplier list. What does that say about their commitment to being Canadian?

In September 2025, Chapman's announced a third decision. The company was investing over $200 million in a new 175,000 square foot production facility at its Markdale location, adding 200 new jobs, and building six new production lines. The expansion, Chapman stated, came at a critical time when competition from multinationals was increasing and the company needed to "establish a stronger competitive ground." The Ontario government backed the expansion with a $27 million loan through Invest Ontario.

The company bet that Canadians would notice a Canadian company choosing margin loss over price increases, and it would matter enough to drive purchasing behaviour. Did it result in higher sales? For a short period of time people shared photos of empty shelves in grocery stores where Chapmans had sold out. But is it sustaining longterm sales numbers or just a short term support buy when Canadian emotions were running high?

Chapman's bet that enough Canadians would care that they would keep buying Chapman's, and possibly buy more of it, to make up for the margin loss. The company calculated that customer loyalty would have enough cash value to justify absorbing tariff costs. Chapman said his sales data does not turn around fast enough to confirm what is happening in stores. And since Chapman's is a private company, their financial reports are not public knowledge, so all we can do id hope enough Canadians are still backing Canadian companies who took a stand for our sovereignty.

What the research says:

The Harris Poll's 2025 Corporate Reputation Survey, conducted with Canadian Business magazine, ranked Chapman's second among every company measured in Canada, behind only the Professional Women's Hockey League. Chapman's took the top spot as Canada's number one Consumer Packaged Goods brand. The polling firm noted that with 70% of respondents worried about affording their own cost of living, the brands ranking highest were the ones keeping prices fair and not cutting corners, not the ones spending the most on advertising.

That poll was conducted after Chapman's made its price freeze commitment public. Whether that commitment caused the ranking or just aligned with Canadians' existing views of the company is not something the poll answers. Harris Poll measured reputation, not causation.

The Toronto Metropolitan University Ted Rogers School of Management reached similar ground from a different angle. Its inaugural Great Canadian Brand Index, which surveyed over 2,100 Canadians in May 2025, named Chapman's the country's single most valued brand overall, ahead of every company measured, on a methodology built specifically to capture trust and cultural fit rather than market size or revenue.

The Bank of Canada conducted its own research on the Buy Canadian movement one year after it started, using transaction-level barcode data from about 10,000 Canadian households in the NielsenIQ Homescan Consumer Panel. The researchers found a measurable, two percentage point increase in spending on Canadian products starting in March 2025, with that increase holding steady through the summer. In categories where a Canadian alternative exists, coffee and fruit juice showed the largest shifts. Chapman's sits in exactly that kind of category, where a Canadian ice cream option is available to anyone willing to look for it.

Canadian sentiment has shifted toward domestic brands during the same period that Chapman's made its commitment public, and that reputation measurements showed Chapman's benefiting from that shift.

At this rate Chapmans could earn Brand Sovereignty and become a Canadiana Icon.

What Canadians need to realize is Chapman's did not have to prove it was Canadian. The company has never changed hands, never changed ownership, never been bought by a foreign buyer. The Chapman family still owns the business. Canadians did not question whether Chapman's was authentically Canadian. They did not have to do anything to be included in the 'buy Canadian' trend that swept through the nation in 2025.

What Chapman's chose to do was prove that being Canadian meant something important. It meant not raising prices when tariffs hit, even though the company could have. It meant signing thirty year suppliers into multi-year European contracts, instead of hoping things with the US would go back to normal. It meant building a $200 million facility and creating 200 jobs in a town of a few thousand people instead of moving the production somewhere cheaper to manufacture.

Whether Canadians continue to reward that choice over the long term is a story that is still being written.

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Shannon Peel is a Brand Narrative and Communications Strategist. She builds strategic brand storytelling ecosystems, the systems that help businesses, executives, and thought leaders earn authority, credibility, and citations across the digital landscape. Shannon writes about brand strategy, marketing, the Canadian economy, business resilience, and the evolving gig economy. She is a published author and host of the BrandAPeel Podcast.

Sources

Ashley Chapman, quoted in Toronto Life, "The least we can do is make sure Canadians can still afford ice cream," March 20, 2025 Ashley Chapman, quoted in Bayshore Broadcasting, "Chapman's Ice Cream Says It's Putting Canadians First Amid Tariff Pressures," March 10, 2025. Invest Ontario, "Chapman's invests over $200 million to expand ice cream manufacturing in Ontario," press release, September 19, 2025. Farmtario, "Invest Ontario sweetens Chapman's Ice Cream's $200 million expansion," September 29, 2025. The Globe and Mail, "Devastating Chapman's fire sparks family ice-cream maker's second generation," April 17, 2026. The Harris Poll Canada and Canadian Business, "The 2025 Harris Poll Brand Reputation Rankings Revealed," November 2025. Ted Rogers School of Management, Toronto Metropolitan University, "Chapman's Ice Cream scoops up title as Canada's most valued brand," May 12, 2025. Bank of Canada, Olga Bilyk and Jacob Dolinar, "Assessing the Buy Canadian movement one year later," Sparks at Bank, February 2026. IBISWorld, "Ice Cream Production in Canada Industry Analysis, 2025."