Shoppers tired of waiting in line outside a supermarket, or trying to secure a slot with one of the overbooked grocery delivery apps, have new options to bring groceries home. Startups and established companies alike are eager to offer Canadians fresh alternatives during the COVID-19 lockdown and beyond.
Consumers are being offered a growing number of new ways to bring home the bacon, along with fresh produce, eggs, milk and whatever is else on their grocery lists.
Instead of waiting in line outside a supermarket, or trying to secure a slot with one of the grocery delivery apps — which have been slammed with demand during the COVID-19 lockdown — new startups and established companies alike are eager to offer Canadians a fresh alternative.
The grocery industry is highly competitive and has been moving online for some time, but it now appears the competition will be intensifying further, with a range of new entrants looking to help Canadian shoppers buy from the safety of their homes.
Toronto entrepreneur Frank Sinopoli has just launched Grocery Neighbour, a fleet of trucks that will each operate like a supermarket on wheels.
“We’ll have technology to tell you when it’s pulling up, or to notify you to where the grocery truck is,” he says. “It will be like the ice cream truck when it pulls up: it will create that type of experience.” He says the vehicles will be in service by summer.
Then there’s Sysco, one of the country’s biggest distributors of food products to restaurants and hotels, which has just started to offer delivery to regular households with a new program called Sysco@Home.
“The response has been outstanding,” says Sysco Canada president Randy White. “There has been tremendous interest in products like steak, chicken, and what we call value added products, like chicken satays and items that are ready to go.”
Another way to get groceries at home: farmers markets across the country are rushing to fulfil demand in a new way, signing up with a three-year-old Canadian e-commerce platform called Local Line. It gives local farms from across Canada better technology, so that customers can pre-order their favourite mixed greens, fresh cheese, honey and other artisanal products online.
Orders can be prepaid ahead of pickup, so that shoppers can avoid the need to handle cash or browse around a crowded market.
“Our business is onboarding farmers at about nine times our normal rate,” says Local Line founder Cole Jones from the company’s headquarters in Kitchener, Ont.
The grocery truck
Grocery Neighbour’s Sinopoli says the ultimate goal is to have 1,000 grocery trucks country-wide, although there wi