You have to respect marketers shrewd enough to sell the American heartland on the concept of a meat-free hotdog at the ballpark.

But you’d expect nothing less from the sales wizards who convinced senior McDonald’s brass, those barons of bully beef, to add a Canadian brand of soy-based burger to the menu.

If there was a Nobel Prize for sales patter, the savants at Yves Veggie Cuisine would win by acclamation. These people could sell AK-47s to Gandhi.

Then again, it’s a mad, mad, mad cow world, with a serving of bird flu on the side. There’s no better time or place to be loading supermarket shelves with quality meat substitutes.

Bayne Stanley photo, Business Edge
Yves Veggie Cuisine sales vice-president Joe Lawer shows off the company’s product lines.

Not that the company, which sells more than 30 varieties of ersatz “meat” products to consumers from coast to Canadian coast, wishes to be perceived as profiting from unpleasantness.

“We don’t want to take advantage of someone else’s misfortune,” said sales VP Joe Lawer, speaking from Yves’ headquarters in the Vancouver ’burbs.

“Better lifestyles and natural foods are a major consumer trend at the moment,” continued Lawer, who stressed the company doesn’t consider itself in competition with the beef/poultry industries.

Sure, the mad-cow crisis did translate to more black ink on Yves’ ledger. But that beefed-up bottom line was downplayed by Lawer, who described it as a “little surge, because people get nervous and they start looking for alternatives.”

Mad cow or no mad cow, it seems clear there are larger forces at work.

Hain Celestial Group (HAIN – Nasdaq), which took control of Yves Veggie Cuisine three years ago, recently reported a 27-per-cent increase in second-quarter net income (up 29 cents US a share).

And while the company doesn’t provide breakdowns for its Canadian division (which claims ownership of a 90-per-cent market share) it seems reasonable to assume that Yves Veggie Cuisine is keeping pace.

Whether a wiener substitute made from soy protein, hydrolyzed wheat protein, carrageenan, natural liquid smoke, pantothenic acid, iron oxide and other ingredients is as tasty as an old- fashioned frank containing the traditional mix of (mercifully) anonymous meat byproducts is for the individual palate to decide.

But the fact remains, baseball fans are now chowing down on cholesterol-free, low-fat, meatless weenies at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.

And following a successful trial of Yves-created McVeggie burgers at McDonald’s outlets across Canada, customers in the U.S. are now following suit.

Better still, Hain Celestial has the inside track on a high-stakes followup. Because where McVeggie soy burgers have staked out new turf, mock chicken nuggets and non-fat breakfast strips are sure to follow.

“We’re working very closely with McDonald’s because they have very strict guidelines on how they want to proceed,” Lawer confided. “There’s a lot of scrutiny that goes on. We’re trying to fit into their business model going forward.”

Once again, the company’s timing is impeccable. Yves/Hain Celestial is nurturing a relationship with McDonald’s at the precise moment the fast-food moguls are frantically trying to alter their image as artery-cloggers and flab peddlers.

The same month the company CEO dropped dead of heart failure, McDonald’s announced a new “balanced lifestyles platform” in an effort to join the U.S. fight against obesity.

So it’s a source of Canadian pride that the scheme to link with McDonald’s was first cooked up around the boardroom table of Yves’ Veggie Cuisine HQ in Delta, B.C.

Originally founded by a shrewd Quebecer named Yves Potvin, the company was already generating a reported $35 million in annual sales when Hain Celestial Group came knocking in 2001.

The sale made headline news in The Soy Daily and, not incidentally, put $32.5 million US (plus 61,000 Hain Celestial shares) into Potvin’s pocket.

Though Potvin is no longer associated with the company, the momentum he generated continues to build.

On April 12, Yves Veggie Cuisine shipped a new Canadian line to be branded Prima Veggie, targeting what Lawer calls the “mainstream consumer,” perceived as more of a culinary dabbler than a hard-core vegan.

Regionally speaking, Yves records its most robust sales in Lotus Land. Perhaps surprisingly, Yves products also do well in Alberta cattle country.

Meanwhile, the wizards have launched a high-energy spring advertising campaign to accompany a concerted distribution push in Toronto.

“We’re trying to flood the market, tell them who we are. It’s about a healthy lifestyle and these are the products you want to eat,” Lawer said.

If McDonald’s bought in, Hogtown should be a pushover.