COVER STORY
The branded goodfood delivery boxes are outfitted with special insulating liners on the inside to help keep the food items packed into the recyclable boxes fresh for up to 48 hours from the time of delivery.
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meal-kit providers offer Canadian households of all size and demographic groupings, coupled with premium quality ingredients and easy-to-follow cooking instructions, makes such companies the rising stars of today’s COVID-19 economy. Founded in Montreal six years go under the Culiniste banner, Goodfood Market Corp. was formed by three friends and business partners—Jonathan Ferrari, Neil Cuggy and Raffi Krikorian—sharing a strong passion for food and technology that saw the company build up a subscription base of 200,000 Canadian households by August of 2019, while raising $21 million in capital funding after becoming listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange in 2017. After raising additional equity to add two operations in Ontario, another plant in Montreal, and two new facilities in Calgary and Vancouver, the company now reaches about 95 per cent of the Canadian population, according to cofounder Ferrari. “We love good food and we crave modern ways of shopping and cooking,’’ Ferrari told the Canadian Packaging magazine in a recent interview. As Ferrari recalls, “The concept for our business model is based on giving everyone the ability to experience fas-
CANADIANPACKAGING · October 2020
cinating flavors with farm-to-table in- fast products including smoothies and gredients through a hassle-free user ex- omelettes, Goodfood has recorded the perience that’s efficient and affordable.” first profitable fiscal quarter in its histWith an estimated 40- to 45-percent ory in April of 2020, at the height of the of the Canadian home meal kit market, first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the company swiftly evolved from a Canada. “Undoubtedly, COVID-19 has had a narrowly-focused meal kit assembler to an online grocery and home meal solu- significant [upside] impact our busitions provider with expansive product ness,” Ferrari acknowledges, “as we saw portfolio and a growing recipe list that a strong uptick in demand, and that renowadays includes about 35 recipes that sulted in a strong growth in subscribers can be part of six recurring weekly plans, and revenue.” Even so, “The shift to online grocery or purchased through mix-and-match via the company’s “re-done user experi- in Canada was underway well before the pandemic hit,” Ferrari points out. ence” on the browser. “We have seen a strong acceleration of Today employing 3,000 people across the country and offering an expanded the adoption of online grocery,” he says, menu list that includes ready-to-eat “and that is a trend that has been and will meals, grocery items such as olive oil, continue to support our growth. “Our market will continue to thrive peanut butter and tea leaves, and breakCANADIANPACKAGING.COM