City offers local businesses help with online sales and delivery

The City of Montreal is offering local merchants a little help to facilitate online shopping and delivery of their goods during the COVID -19 crisis.

Businesses interested in creating a digital platform or improving their online presence can get free help doing so by filling out a form on the montreal.ca website to indicate their interest before April 17.

The city will also be working with several local organizations and business development agencies (SDCS) to set up a bicycle delivery service so that local businesses can get their products to nearby customers, even if they don’t have their own delivery system.

Businesses can use the delivery service if they are a member of their local SDC or are within three kilometres of an SDC that provides the service to non-members. The businesses will charge their clients for delivery (maximum $5 plus tax) and will be billed for the delivery service once a month by their SDC.

The city gives several examples of the types of businesses that may want to use this service: bookstores, hardware stores, bakeries or fruit sellers.

Excluded are those businesses that produce prepared meals, frozen foods or fresh products that cannot be left for more than an hour outside.

“More than ever, we are being asked to promote local purchasing,” Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante

said in a statement announcing the initiatives. “Le Panier Bleu (The Blue Basket program) launched by the Quebec government yesterday is a powerful illustration of this. In this same vein, the City of Montreal is deploying today a series of tools and measures to support Montreal merchants through this crisis. Today, we offer some more support measures to allow the population to be supplied and merchants to pursue some of their activities.”