Tired of supermarket lineups, some Toronto residents turn to smaller neighbourhood stores
Before COVID-19 hit, Jennifer Uy would get her groceries from big supermarkets such as Costco and the Real Canadian Superstore, but in the past month she's been buying ingredients at smaller shops and even restaurants near her home in Scarborough.
"I haven't even thought of going to the supermarkets in the past month," says the mother of two and owner of wellness company Happy Natural Products. "I have in-laws over 80, I have a three- and nine-year-old; I just want to be in and out when I'm getting groceries and not be in a big line."
Uy is among others in the city who have shifted where they get food, opting for smaller neighbourhood grocers, independent stores that pivoted to online ordering, and restaurants that now sell pantry staples. For some, it's to avoid the lineups; for others, it's a way to support small businesses.
Uy now gets her food from Cosmos Agora, a Greek butcher shop and grocer in a small plaza at Lawrence Avenue East and Warden Avenue. They have a bakery, too, so she was able to ask for a bit of fresh yeast when all the other stores were out.
Another time, she was at her go-to Chinese barbecue spot East Court and Mike's BBQ getting barbecue pork and asked if they had any extra carrots and cabbage to make a stir fry. Another week, she went to Agincourt Bakery and Italian Kitchen, hidden in the corner of a plaza at Pharmacy Avenue and Finch Avenue East, for fresh breads and tortellini for her son.
"I grew up in Kensington Market and this is how we shopped," she says. "We got meat from one place, bread from another, vegetables in Chinatown. We're now used to going to the big supermarket where we can get everything in one place. But now with the lines, it's just faster to go to the smaller places where I can get what I need quickly.
"You also feel better for helping out the smaller stores, especially the restaurants, so I sometimes ask if they have any ingredients I can buy because I know they have a lot of it sitting around. I can't order takeout every day, but I do need vegetables, milk and eggs."
In the Roncesvalles neighbourhood, marketing executive Amrita Gurney also made the switch to businesses on the strip and smaller online grocers.
"I started doing it a month ago because these smaller stores had less foot traffic so you could limit exposure to other people," she says. "But after hearing stories of local businesses trying to keep staff employed, it's now more of a mission to make sure my money goes to these places so that they continue to exist."
Gurney now gets bi-weekly deliveries from artisan bread-maker Blackbird Baking Co. Before working from home, she'd visit the bakery's Kensington Market location once every few months. For produce, she orders from Grow, Gather and Co.
She also gets weekly deliveries from Alimentari, an Italian pasta shop and restaurant on Roncesvalles Ave. that has closed its dining room but ramped up its retail offerings in the last month.
"They have an amazing puttanesca sauce, fresh cheeses, canned goods like chickpeas, pesto, dried pasta and cookies," she says. "It's all contactless delivery and you can get it quicker than some of the big box stores where it's harder to get a delivery slot."
In the weekend before March 17, when Ontario's restaurants were ordered to close their dining rooms and people were starting to panic buy, Alimentari saw sales double, says Sarah Terpstra, who owns the store with her husband, Christopher.
"Christopher saw what was happening in Italy and started placing huge orders on canned tomatoes and dried pasta to stock the store early on," she says. "We used to only carry 00 and semolina flour, but now we also have 0, which is more similar to all-purpose, (plus) chickpea flour, chestnut flour. We wouldn't normally think anyone would buy it, but it's been flying off the shelves. Same with eggs. We also have wine so you don't have to line up at the LCBO. We're just trying to be a one-stop shop."
Without a dining room, they had space to store the bags of flour and canned goods that were coming in. They order large packs of yeast from restaurant suppliers and repackage them into smaller portions for home bakers. The fridge was freed up for more groceries. Christopher does delivery as well.
"I've heard from people that they feel more comfortable coming into a store like ours. We have the Plexiglas shields and hand sanitizers, but also a more steady stream of people throughout the day since we no longer have a lunch or dinner rush," says Terpstra. "We also do online orders, so if we get 15 orders in a day that's 15 fewer people in the store. We'll see how this will change the business and what the people in Roncesvalles want. We may not even reopen the restaurant side because who knows what the restaurant culture will be like after."
Leandro Baldassarre of fresh pasta wholesaler and takeout shop Famiglia Baldassarre in the west-end Wallace Emerson neighbourhood also paid attention to Italy going on lockdown and ordered large amounts of flour and tomatoes.
Customers also started to ask if he sold pantry staples and produce, so Baldassarre began turning his wholesale and takeout pasta shop into more of a retail operation, ordering from restaurant suppliers and stocking essentials such as sugar, salt, eggs, butter, milk, tomatoes, herbs, onions, garlic, tuna, lentils and multiple kinds of flour.
"I think I sold 500 packs of yeast in the past two weeks," he says. "We get them by the pound so we have to divide them into smaller portions. Same with the flour that comes in 20-kg bags."
Still, he says shifting to retail hasn't been a big money-maker. For one thing, the space is tiny and wasn't built to be a retail store. It can only fit so many pantry items, which he can't charge a lot for, and they've been allowing one customer in at a time to minimize contact.
"Now I realize why convenience stores are more expensive because they can't sell the volume that a big grocer does," he says. "But for now, we have people coming in and getting fed, the staff gets a paycheque. If the company isn't making money, it doesn't matter right now."
Financial services worker Luke Kumar started going to IC Food World in Mississauga at Islington Avenue and Bloor Street West after he waited an hour to get into his local Food Basics supermarket. The mid-sized grocer used to be a No Frills, Kumar recalls, and he says he's now doing all his shopping there.
"It's convenient, it's close to home, the prices are comparable, it's like finding a nugget," he says. "I never really went there before; that was my fault, but I'm going to continue shopping there because I can find everything I need. Buying local and supporting small businesses will go a long way in helping the community."
The influx of new customers is a welcome sight for many independently run grocers at this time, but it can also be overwhelming for those not equipped to handle the volume.
Julie Liao and Roger Wang have owned the Plank Road Market at Danforth and Coxwell Avenue since 2006. It's a small neighbourhood grocer no larger than the average convenience store. For them, business has picked up dramatically in the last month, including orders from new customers who didn't shop there before the pandemic. The two had to close the storefront and move to an online ordering system.
"My kids help a bit in the afternoon when they're finished online schooling, but it's just me and my husband every day, and we can only handle so many orders," she says. "Even at night we have to tend to emails and organize orders; there's a lot of paperwork."
Liao says sales haven't increased by much since the pandemic because she and her husband can only process so many orders a day. But right now, her priority is to get food to those in her neighbourhood.
"We have so many regulars and seniors around. They are why we stay open," she says. "These are the people that have been with us for 10 years and we don't want to lose them."
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Karon Liu is a Toronto-based culture reporter for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @karonliu