Identity crisis

The situation: The appeal of a chain generally starts with what made the initial business successful. For Borealis Grille & Bar in Guelph, Ont., the appeal lies in its locally sourced menu, core food offerings and sustainable business practices. The restaurant is owned by the Neighborhood Group of Companies (NGC), founded in 1990 by Bob Desautels to create restaurants that promote locally crafted food and drink. Borealis was opened in 2008 and was popular enough that a second location was opened in nearby Kitchener-Waterloo. NGC wants to keep growing the brand and open more locations, but Court Desautels, group chief operating officer, wondered whether to stick with what they know works and is profitable or change things up depending on the location.

Walk through the wood doors at Borealis in Guelph and you are greeted by the aroma of hearty soup simmering on the stove, a hint of spices in the air. On the wall, a chalkboard with the hand-drawn logos of microbreweries within driving distance (and whose beers are available for tasting) hangs alongside prints of the Group of Seven’s most recognizable pieces. “Does our menu in Guelph define the Borealis experience or should each Borealis offer a locally sourced menu?” Desautels wondered. “Practically, the latter means that if we had a restaurant in B.C.’s Fraser Valley, the menu items would be totally different from our range in Guelph. We want to grow our brand, open more locations, but my biggest challenge at the moment is that we’re outgrowing some of our key sources of supply.”

Borealis has a core group of 30 menu items that its regular customers look for. Desautels considered offering a subset of that menu — perhaps a staple menu of five to 10 items — at every Borealis restaurant that opened in the future. “This may help us stretch our supply of fresh local ingredients as we grow. It will also allow guests familiar with our restaurant to feel at home at any Borealis they dine at,” he said. “But how would we reconcile the fact that the farther we go from Guelph, the farther the ingredients have to travel? Will this policy be consistent with our ‘Obsessively Local’ philosophy?”

Sourcing locally means working with the best family-owned farms in the region, whose production output and costs are dependent on the weather. These farms can also only increase production incrementally over time. As a result, Borealis already can’t always offer the same menu items. “What cost $10 a pound last year might be $14 a pound this year because of a cold spell. We have to work with what we can source,” Desautels said. “When we cannot get the great ingredients we need for a dish, we change up our menu based on what is available from farmers. For example, we started our first restaurant with 50 menu items and, over the years, we’ve had to edit it down by 40% and offer other features.”

The Kitchener-Waterloo restaurant offers the same menu as Guelph, but if a third or fourth restaurant opened a few hundred kilometres away from the first two, NGC could have to consider reshaping what the Borealis brand stands for. “We’re not a standalone restaurant like Canoe. And unlike the higher end chains — Milestones, for example — where the menu is largely the same from place to place, we may have to re-imagine our Borealis brand as the restaurant that sources everything within a certain radius of its location,” Desautels said. This could mean an entirely different menu for each regional location. “Would this work?” he asked. “I’m not sure anyone else in the restaurant industry has tried this before.”

“MY BIGGEST CHALLENGE AT THE MOMENT IS THAT WE’RE OUTGROWING SOME OF OUR KEY SOURCES OF SUPPLY”