WHAT THE MARKET CAN BEAR
Will Farm Boy out-muscle vendors?
Grocery chain Farm Boy is set to open a new store in the Rideau Centre’s old food court by the end of this year, whacking the fragile ecosystem for food retail in the ByWard Market.
“We do have a deal with Farm Boy to open before the end of this year. We’re super-excited about the opportunity to do business with a very successful and well-regarded local retailer,” said Cindy VanBuskirk, the Rideau Centre’s general manager.
Farm Boy began in Cornwall more than 30 years ago but is now anchored in Ottawa and has been expanding rapidly over the last five years or so, opening stores in London, Kitchener and Whitby.
The details of the store plans are Farm Boy’s to share but customers shouldn’t expect a large, suburban-style supermarket, VanBuskirk said. The company has been experimenting with different templates for its stores, trying out more prepared foods and space for eating in instead of only carrying out. It even has a counter at the Canadian Tire Centre, selling sandwiches and other takeout to eat on the spot.
A store retrofitted into an urban mall is another new model, so there isn’t much precedent to go on and Farm Boy’s spokeswoman didn’t return calls — this news is out a bit earlier than planned. But the building permit issued by the city to fit up Farm Boy’s space is for work on a twolevel store, with an estimated construction cost of $1 million. It will be more than a meal counter.
People who care about the Market have struggled with its gradual conversion from a daytime source for fresh food groceries into a nighttime entertainment district. Farmers markets have popped up all over town, competing with the ByWard Market’s vendors during peak summer season.
The district is down to one year-round bricks-and-mortar produce store, and retailers worry that if that one closed, shoppers would find they couldn’t buy all their necessities in the Market, particularly in the winter. Once shoppers started going to the Metro or Loblaw’s a little bit east on Rideau Street, maybe they’d just buy everything at the supermarket. Then the bakeries, cheese shops and butchers would collapse, too. Pubs and clubs, which can generally afford higher rents, would take over completely.
Would that be a bad thing? Maybe it’s what we want, but we’d certainly have lost a living connection to the Ottawa of old.
Now, hello, here’s a full-service grocery store right on the Market’s doorstep, whose whole proposition is that its products are better, fresher and more local than what you find in a Metro or Loblaw’s. It could be the backstop the Market’s retailers need to take a deep breath and feel secure for a change. Or it could be the final blow. Nobody from the ByWard Market’s merchants’ association was talking Tuesday, though their councillor is excited by Farm Boy’s impending arrival.
“I think (Farm Boy) will stabilize it,” said Rideau-Vanier Coun. Mathieu Fleury, for whom the ByWard Market has been a major preoccupation for the seven years he’s been in office. “They bring in good products but they’re not necessarily unique products. ... There’s a lot of room in the Market for the specialty stores to do what they do.”
However good Farm Boy’s selection is, he said, it won’t directly compete with the imported olive oils and cheeses of La Bottega Nicastro on George Street, Fleury said, or a dedicated fishmonger like Lapointe’s.
“It does force them to stay unique and give a lot more of the specialty experience,” Fleury said.
The city has just created a new non-profit management board for the Market, and its first task is to devise a long-term strategy. Fleury said he’s glad the plan will be able to take account of Farm Boy’s presence from the beginning, rather than being crafted over months and then blown away by a surprise.
VanBuskirk imagines a downtown Farm Boy will be convenient for the growing population of condominium residents nearby, though. She pointed out that the Farm Boy, a Shoppers Drug Mart and an LCBO will all be close to the mall’s entrance to the Rideau light-rail station, due to open in a year, making them convenient for rail commuters to pop into for basics.
Fleury agreed: “Rideau station is in the middle, I think it’s 10 minutes from anywhere else on the LRT,” he said. “It could bring a whole new group of people into the area.”
I think (Farm Boy) will stabilize it . ... There’s a lot of room in the Market for the specialty stores to do what they do.