Planet Organic Market set to open two new locations this spring
Company insists supplier payment issues are behind them as they move to expand
Planet Organic Market has resolved issues it ran into with paying suppliers on time and is opening two new stores in the Edmonton area, the company said Monday.
The grocery firm expects to open an Ellerslie Market outlet on Parsons Road north of Ellerslie Road at the end of June, then add a Sherwood Park operation in September, spokeswoman Jessica Brady said.
Each site will be approximately 750 square metres, or about half the size of the two existing Edmonton locations. These will be the first new facilities the eight-store chain has put up since 2015, Brady said.
“Right now, we’re sitting in the Whyte Avenue area and Jasper Avenue, so we have two of the main beats of Edmonton … ( but) we get a lot of customer requests for just outside Edmonton.”
Although several bakers said in 2016 they had stopped supplying Planet Organic because they hadn’t been paid for months, Brady said these problems have been settled and suppliers are being paid on time.
“We were organizing our accounts and we were restructuring our business quite a bit, so there was that time of struggle. We absolutely appreciate all the support from customers and suppliers,” she said. “We have hired a completely new accounting team based in Canada to run our payment system.”
Planet Organic, started in 1993 with a single health-food store on Whyte Avenue, expanded across Canada and the United States before running into financial problems in 2010 and sought bankruptcy protection.
It was purchased by Natural Markets Food Group of Irvington, N.Y., which is controlled by Toronto-based Catalyst Capital Group.