1090 Lithium Dr. Thunder Bay, ON
Our customers demand consistent, quality product year-round, and they expect convenient access to it. In today’s hectic world, that’s totally understandable, but it’s made it difficult for busy chefs to access locally-produced foods.
We’re proud to bridge the gap between busy chefs and busy farmers. Our goal for our farmers is to make sure there’s always a “space on the shelf” for their product, whether it’s beef they can supply year-round or fresh vegetables available only in season.
To make sure there’s always that space on the shelf for our farmers, we adopt a closest-first approach that gives our customers the consistency they need. That means we work closely with local vegetable growers, meat producers and other suppliers to offer you a complete broadline catalogue year-round, with local options whenever they’re available.
Local Beef
We started working with the Rainy River District Regional Abattoir in 2013 to provide farmers in their area with access to a broader market. Since then we’ve moved hundreds of animals from their plant to our Provincially-inspected processing floor, where we’re able to custom-cut meat to order and offer customers local beef exactly how they want it.
Local Produce
A group of farmers near Sault Ste Marie produces far more than their local market can consume. Specializing in root vegetables, cabbages and broccoli, this group has been looking for a way to ensure their farms grow to sustain the next generation.
Not only have we been able to help this group sell their existing supply, we now work closely with them to project the quantities demanded by our customers, and as our local-food business grows, so does theirs.
Synergy
We recently made an agreement with Canada Malting Co that lets us purchase their extra grain in large quantities at wholesale prices for our beef farmer partners in Rainy River. Now, when we’ve got empty outbound trucks, we can send Rainy River their grain, and come back loaded with local beef.
This new synergy defrays our empty-haul expenses and gives our farmer partners an excellent supply of feed at a discounted price, helping to keep costs down.