Organic Garage, an independent Toronto-based organic grocer with a growing footprint, increasing revenue and new business verticals – just announced the expansion of its Hand-Picked Partner program.
Founded in 2005 by a fourth-generation grocer, Matt Lurie, Organic Garage’s 4-outlet Toronto area chain did $24 million in sales last year. February 2021 marked the 12th consecutive month of sales increases, in compared to 2020’s corresponding months.
Like Whole Foods (purchased by Amazon for US$ 13.7 billion), OG targets health-conscious consumers, but it is more neighbourhood focused – with “a wide selection of healthy and natural products at everyday affordable prices.”
“The price premium being charged on organic groceries in big chains is artificially high. It is pushed to a point where the average consumer feels that they can’t eat organic,” Lurie told Global Stocks News CEO Guy Bennett.
He added, “We started Organic Garage to lower the price points. You can come into one of our stores, shop organic and all natural and find something that’s going to fit your budget.”
The Handpicked Partner Program will initially consist of the placement of the Cali-Rolls sustainable sushi brand at the Organic Garage Junction location and the roll-out of the Tori’s Bakeshop program across all four OG stores.
Tori’s Bakeshop is the latest partner in a curated food concept that allows select vendors to sell unique, ready-made and specialised foods to Organic Garage customers through small-footprint, on site kiosks.
“Tori’s Bakeshop is grateful to be neighbourhood partners with Organic Garage, whose healthy conscience, best practices and community engagement are values we wholeheartedly champion,” said Tori’s Bakeshop founder, Tori Vaccher. “Their enthusiastic support offers increased access to our organic products in the Greater Toronto Area and beyond.”
OG’s geographic footprint is expanding
On November 28, 2019, OG announced that it had begun construction of the Leaside location – which follows a formula of expanding its store footprint into high population density locations.
Leaside is located northeast of Toronto’s downtown core and consists of over 229,000 households with an average household income of over $139,000 per year within a 5 km radius.
“Organic Garage’s new store, located in the fashionable neighbourhood of Leaside, is set to open in 2021 and could boost revenue by as much as 25% once fully operational,” states eResearch Corp.
At a macro-level, the organic food market has a tail wind. Although arable (farmable) land area is shrinking, land devoted to organic farming is increasing.
“The North American organic sector posted a banner year in 2019,” reports the Organic Trade Association, “with organic sales in the food and non-food markets totalling a record $55.1 billion, up a solid 5% from the previous year”.
Organic Garage is developing specialised products that can be sold outside its own brick & mortar network.
On March 17, 2021 OG announced that its recently acquired the plant-based food company, Future of Cheese has completed recipes and formulations for the initial line of products, and is proceeding to enter commercial production.
The Future of Cheese – now an OG subsidiary – plans to “disrupt the rapidly growing plant-based dairy alternatives market”. “Lactose intolerance affects 5–17% of Europeans, 60–80% of Africans and Asians and around 44% of North Americans” according to Healthline.
Having delicious locally-sourced non-dairy cheese behind the counter is an example of Organic Garage’s differentiation from big chain health-food stores. “In Ontario alone, there could be 25 or 30 outlets. There’s lots of runway for us to continue to add stores, said Lurie.
Also read: Stonyfield Organic introduces lactose free single serve milks that are shelf stable
