Transcript
Speaker: This is Aisle 42.
Speaker: In this episode, I'm joined by Jonathan, co-founder of Good Food, a Canadian meal kit pioneer that's helping thousands of households cook fresh, high quality meals with locally sourced ingredients.
Speaker: From tackling food waste to cheerleading Canadian farmers and producers, Good Food is more than just a meal kit company. It's redefining how Canadians engage with their food. We discuss the shift towards more local and sustainable sourcing, how meal kits help reduce food waste, and why affordability is key to expanding access to organic and premium ingredients.
Speaker: And we dive into the company's recent acquisition of Genuine Tea and their plans for future retail expansion. Okay, let's dive into it with Jonathan from Good Food, because the future of food starts now.
Speaker: Jonathan, thank you for taking time to have this conversation. i think what you guys are doing is wonderful. I've heard such great reports from all over the country about what you're making and how you make it. So I'm looking forward to getting into it.
Speaker: To kick things off and to welcome you to the show, i want to ask if you were to look ahead to the future, what's one change in the food system that would excite you the most? So as i I think about that question, i need to reflect on some of the Canada-US relations that are going on right now and a lot of the tariff conversations.
Speaker: And to me, it's it's really brought to light something that I've felt for a very long time, which is We need to have as local a supply chain as possible.
Speaker: And Canadian businesses like ours need to be really focused on enabling, supporting, doing everything we can for our local supply chains. It's a trend that we had been quite passionate about for a long time.
Speaker: I'll give you an example. We started using vertically farmed greens in our meal kits a few years ago, probably probably four years into it. And what we loved about that was introducing Good Foods customers across the country to recipes and meals that they can prepare with vertically farmed greens.
Speaker: And we love the idea of having food that's grown sometimes within and hour of where our customers live, being able to harvest it really fresh and then get great recipes paired with those ingredients and delivered straight to their homes.
Speaker: So we work with 80 plus farmers across the country and and local Canadian businesses. And that's something that's been important to us for a long time. I think the other key trend that I've been excited about and and that we've been exploring for the future as well is how do we get organic products, pesticide-free organic products, but those better for you products that tend to be very expensive?
Speaker: How do we find ways where there isn't so much of a trade-off with buying what's good for you, what's right for you, and meeting your budget needs. And to me, that's something that I i really woke up to when ah we welcomed our first daughter into our home. So my wife and I have two little girls, a three-year-old and a one-year-old.
Speaker: And when the three-year-old was born, For me, that was one of the key moments where the switch happened in my mind, where I started saying, I need to be focusing in on organic meats, free range meats. I need to be thinking about how to get the pesticides out of the the veggies that we're consuming.
Speaker: It was something that I thought about in the past, but becoming a dad was just a massive switch in my mind. And the way I run my business is anything that goes into our deliveries, into our boxes, it's something that I need to be comfortable eating and serving to my own family.
Speaker: And so that's how we started making a lot of the decisions around being able to swap in organic meats, using organic produce in some of our recipes. And it's something that we'd love to build more upon in the future.
Speaker: Good answer. And congratulations on being a dad of two Little humans. That's wonderful. I only have one. So you've you've beaten me by 100 percent. um For listeners that might not be totally familiar with what it is that you guys do. Can you give bit of a snapshot? You kind of already did. You've already sort of hinted at it, but, um you know, would love to kind of hear the Reader's Digest version of what Good Food is doing. And I'm personally, I'm curious to know what your favorite meal kit is.
Speaker: so Good Food was started in 2014. This is our 11th year in business. I started the business with two co-founders, Neil and Rafi, who are both involved in the business today.
Speaker: Neil heads up all of our operations, all of our fulfillment. ah so During big snowstorms like what we've been having over the past ah few days in in Canada, Him and his team are making sure that all of our deliveries are getting to our customers' homes.
Speaker: And then Rafi is involved on our merchandising and supply chain team. um So essentially what we do is we help Canadians meal plan and deliver all the ingredients and the great recipes that they need to prepare great meals at home.
Speaker: So we are a pioneer of the meal kit space. And over the past few years, we've started building out the selection of products from exclusively meal kits into offering. ah We have a range of like market add-on products that can complement desserts and appetizers and drinks with our meal kits.
Speaker: And we're starting to get into the prepared meal space as well. As in in grocery, like putting prepared meals in grocery or in gas and convenience, that kind of thing? Yes. So currently we're almost exclusively direct to consumer.
Speaker: In the future, we would like to see if our brand can live within grocery or or other retail outlets. I think that's something that we're quite interested in. But today the the brand is almost primarily direct to consumer.
Speaker: We have ah about 100,000 households that households that order from Good Food on a weekly basis, and we deliver about 15 million meals to Canadians across the country every year, just to give you a sense of of scale.
Speaker: That's amazing. Unreal. So going back a few years, what was that turning point? What was that, you know, where you felt like, OK, the meal kit wave, it's it's coming or it's here or it's is it is it a flash in the pan? Like what was that turning point where you guys felt like, OK, we've got it. We've got the right. Well, literally ingredients, but we're going to really jump on this. Was there one thing that really sort of stuck in your head?
Speaker: I like to think back to the early days. I think whenever you think about starting your own business or having ah building something that wouldn't exist without you, I think I was looking for to to participate in an industry that I was personally very passionate about.
Speaker: So as long as I can remember, I've always been interested in the food supply chain, where we're growing food, how it's getting to our homes. I was also very interested about the the cuisine side and the cooking.
Speaker: And so I learned to cook with my grandmother. She showed me kind of the some traditional recipes when I was when i was growing up. And that's how i I developed a love of cooking and being in the kitchen.
Speaker: And i was working in 2013, right before we started Good Food. I was working at RBC in the investment banking division, which was basically working on mergers and acquisitions, helping companies grow in that way.
Speaker: And it was an incredible experience, but I found myself every night being at the office late, not having access to food delivery, not having Uber Eats didn't exist at the time, DoorDash didn't exist at the time.
Speaker: And I didn't have time to to go to the grocery store to get my to get my groceries or my ingredients. And frankly, I wasn't looking for an easy way to get food delivered because I love the idea of cooking.
Speaker: So this concept of a meal kit where you're getting all the ingredients, they're carefully sourced, it's all fresh, perfectly portioned, and you have this roadmap with a recipe of what to create with the meals.
Speaker: I got really excited about that concept. And so by twenty late 2014, early 2015, we had our first few customers, we raised some outside investment, and we felt like we had really strong product market fit.
Speaker: And we were really feeling the wind in our sails. And I think as we felt the customer feedback coming in and the excitement around what we were doing, that was probably the moment where I felt like we had something really special.
Speaker: And we started getting, we started the business in based out of Montreal in Eastern Canada. So we also got pretty excited when we had ah fans out in Western Canada and BC and Calgary ah that were asking us to expand the business into Western Canada.
Speaker: So a few elements that came together that we were pretty excited about. And out of our analyst class at at RBC, myself and my co-founders went off to to to found Good Food.
Speaker: And then another person in our analyst class, Josh Zemeir, went off and found it Skip the Dishes, based out of Winnipeg. And so it was kind of cool to see from that single RBC analyst class, we had the restaurant delivery concept that got started out of Winnipeg and then good food out of Montreal.
Speaker: I love it. That's fantastic. I almost let you off the hook. What's your favorite meal kit that you guys have right now? So as you can tell, I'm i'm on the family plan. We have a couple of different plans that are tailored to our customers' needs.
Speaker: The family plan is the one I'm on. It's a for serving four servings per recipe. ah For example, last night we had the shrimp and ah pesto pasta, which was amazing.
Speaker: But it's ah it's a really easy way to cook four servings for for our family, quite generous portions. So we end up with with some leftovers for the next day as well. um And then on a date night, ah we have a special series of recipes that are called the artisan meals.
Speaker: And so those are kind of some of the more premium ah cuts of proteins, some premium produce. So we'd love to just my wife and I get together and cook you know an artisan meal on a Friday night or a Saturday night.
Speaker: fed steak or we have a panko tuna recipe on the menu this week, but something a little bit fancier that that's great for date night. Love it. And one of the things I particularly love about the meal kit wave is that it it creates culinary experiences, food experiences for normal folk, folk that don't normally do, you know, like prep at home, something more elegant or sophisticated or with ingredients that maybe are not in their their normal.
Speaker: And oh my wife was exploring some plant based eating. And it was a meal kit experience that kind of gave her confidence to explore different ways of, you know, preparing plant based foods that was still like really flavorful and interesting and something she was really proud to serve. So you guys must be hearing some remarkable feedback from people that, you know, for the first time or sort of early on in their experience with a meal kit kind of realize, hey, I can do this. I am interested in making something special.
Speaker: Yes, and especially for some of those dietary preferences that are, it's harder to come by recipes and inspiration for them. So vegetarian, plant-based meals.
Speaker: We also cater to gluten-free and dairy-free diets. We have... paleo, keto, a really broad range of different food preferences or or intolerances that I think benefit a lot from having a meal kit service that makes it easy.
Speaker: The other key benefit of meal kits is that because you're receiving all of the ingredients perfectly portioned, we're able to eliminate a lot of the food waste that exists within the typical grocery supply chain.
Speaker: So all of the ingredients that we we receive in our production facilities where we prepare the ingredients to be delivered, everything is ordered on a just-in-time basis. So there's no waste that's happening within our warehouses.
Speaker: And then within our customers' homes, because we've received exactly the right quantities at home, our customers are not left over with all sorts of ingredients that they need to throw out at the end of the week.
Speaker: So if you if you think about the waste that happens, like a a typical bag of lettuce within a grocery store, 76% of those bag lettuces never end up being consumed, if you can believe that.
Speaker: And so I think meal kits are a great way to make sure that you're getting exactly the right quantity of ingredients that you need, but also you're not wasting them at home because you overbought at the grocery store.
Speaker: And so that also turns into a great way to save money as well, because you're, <unk> you're not throwing out your waste at the end of the week. And I think greens is a really good example of, you know, they, they don't last that long. And when you buy your head of lettuce, which is getting increasingly more expensive, especially with a busy week or, you know, a lot of things going on, it can be like, well, how many salads am I going to eat in the next three days before this lettuce is going to end up in my organics bin? And so,
Speaker: consuming what we buy and ah throwing out as little as possible, I think is really important. And you know, ah everyone's concerned about food inflation. Everyone's concerned about affordability.
Speaker: Well, I think meal kits is one of the ways that, you know, folks can be more kind of keep a tighter rein on things. So I like that approach to food waste as a way to save money because it's very, very tangible. Absolutely.
Speaker: On the creativity side, what is it about some of these recipes that like, I mean, I know you guys have a very chef inspired approach to to these meal kits. Is there a group of your consumers that are just like, give us simple meals. We don't want anything fancy versus the ones that are like, give me the fanciest. Like I want saffron in a little gold tin, you know, direct from ah what's been that creativity journey for you guys.
Speaker: Yeah, so I would say in the, certainly in the the artisan meal line, we tend to go ah further into into the food forward meals. And we partnered, for example, with a few of the more recently Michelin starred restaurants across Canada, one of which was L'Abattoir in Vancouver and St. Lawrence as well, or Lawrence.
Speaker: Both wonderful restaurants. I've eaten at them both in within the last year. So good. really amazing and actually my co-founder raffi proposed to his now wife at lawrence the uh the restaurant out in vancouver so there was a personal connection to it there love it so we we like to go food forward on those i think the the meat and potatoes crowd is is also a consumer taste preference that we understand well and we developed over the past few months a line of value meals
Speaker: And so those are really your your staples, your more basic recipes that we can offer at a really compelling price point. So we're at $9.99 per meal on those recipes.
Speaker: And I think Canadians have really been feeling that food inflation and the struggle to so make the grocery bill ultimately yeah ah fit their their weekly budgets.
Speaker: and so We're seeing a lot of traction on our more basic recipes, the value meals that are very affordable. The last thing that I would mention on the topic is our head chef, Jordana, who's been with us since 2016, almost since the founding of the business.
Speaker: She's always loved to help our good food customers travel through our food. And so over the course of 2025, one of the cool things that we're doing is Jordana and ah few of her culinary sidekicks are traveling the world to discover new flavors, to go to street food and markets in some really cool, interesting places around the world.
Speaker: So in in January, she was in Mexico City, tasting some of the flavors in the markets there and bringing back pozole and bringing back some really cool ingredients as well, tomatillos, making making tamales.
Speaker: So that was our our Mexican adventure. And right now, Jordana is on a plane to Southeast Asia. And so she's doing a tour in South Korea, I believe, Thailand, Vietnam, and exploring some of those flavors, filming ah content while she's there, but most importantly, bringing back recipes and authentic flavors from some of those travels.
Speaker: Okay, so she has the best job in the world. Is that what you're saying? That's about right. Oh my gosh. Running up perishable supply chain at scale, obviously, is a complex one. You said there's the numbers you were putting out there, how many meals you're doing across the country in a year, any given year. That's remarkable.
Speaker: You've got facilities in Montreal and in, is it in Calgary? Is that where your other facilities? We're in Montreal and Calgary, correct. Calgary, yeah. Yeah. So what is it on the innovation or the technology side that's kind of helping make this you know all happen, especially with food waste being so important to you guys?
Speaker: So I would say on the technology side, our chief technology officer, Bapasha, she's been the brains behind how to connect a combination of custom-developed software, purchased third-party software, and bringing it all together so that we can get real-time inventory, real-time tracking.
Speaker: There's about 60% of our deliveries that we do through our own delivery fleet, and then 40% that's outsourced. If you can imagine the complexity of from the moment an ingredient is picked at the farm to when it gets delivered to our customers, we need to make sure everything is happening in real time,
Speaker: I always like to repeat to the team, as soon as the tomato is picked, it's starting to rot, right? So we need to make sure that we're getting everything as fresh as we can to our customers. And we've done some research that shows us that on average, we're getting fresh ingredients delivered to our customers seven days faster than the normal grocery supply chain.
Speaker: So it's really fresh, direct to consumer and the technology and fulfillment backbone that we've built. has enabled us to ah to reach Canadians across the country.
Speaker: In the next phase of Good Foods evolution, we've started building a portfolio of next generation brands. So in November of 2024, we made our first acquisition, ah which is Genuine Tea based out of Toronto.
Speaker: And Genuine Tea is a leader in the craft tea movement. So some of the best third wave coffee shop, like 49th Parallel, Balzac's in Toronto, they're selling genuine tea and genuine tea products.
Speaker: And so one of the things we've done with this acquisition strategy is we're able to use the good food ah fulfillment ecosystem and the backbone that we built there in order to help other brands scale across the country.
Speaker: And ah the Genuine Tea founders are continuing to run the business. They're equity partners in the business. They've maintained 20% stake in ah Genuine Tea, the subsidiary.
Speaker: So they're still running the business, but they're able to benefit from the 10 years of work and investment that we've made into our supply chain and direct-to-consumer fulfillment. That sounds very cool. And I can ah can imagine down the road, you know appetizers or snacks or other, like you said, value add ah ways in which the consumers are not just looking to make the entree, but in order to sort of round out their culinary experience at home.
Speaker: you know, we can think of as like a Super Bowl party. if If I'm ordering a meal kit for a Super Bowl event, I'm going to need a whole bunch of other things. To really make that event ah one that I was really excited about from a food perspective. So, yeah, no you've got you've got a lot of ah real cool pieces to that puzzle, which is great.
Speaker: Speaking of which, one of them is that you're publicly traded. So what's it like leading the growth of a publicly traded meal kit company? Well, you know, when ah when I think back, so we went public 2017, and I believe I was 29 or 30 years old at the time.
Speaker: And so I felt fairly inexperienced and underqualified for the role, which I think is exactly where every entrepreneur wants to be, right? Feeling a little bit like an imposter, feeling ah underqualified and and trying to figure it out.
Speaker: I think My background working in the financial industry before starting Good Food helped me understand how to deal with the different players in the capital markets, the investors, the research analysts.
Speaker: So I think I benefited from that experience. I think the other nice thing is there's a quarterly news cycle that gets created around the company when we release our quarterly results.
Speaker: There's this natural publicity or press that comes out of it. And I think it was one of the ways in which we were able to gain some mind share over ah some of our competitors over time.
Speaker: In the past 10 years, the meal kit industry in Canada has gone from having about a dozen players to consolidating into two national brands currently, HelloFresh and Good Food.
Speaker: And so we've seen a lot of consolidation in the space. I think when things are going really well, it's great to be running a public company. It's great to get that press cycle. When things started becoming a little bit more rocky coming out of the pandemic, when we found ourselves in a place where we needed to rework our cost structure and achieve profitability, which I'm happy to say were in our ninth quarter of of profitability right now. So we we've been successful in achieving that stability, but the process of going through a business transformation, going through more difficult times, I think I would have preferred to do that as a private company, but there are a lot of benefits to the visibility of of being a public company and being able to give our investors liquidity in their shares, right? To be able to buy or sell shares as they please into the the public markets.
Speaker: Yeah, that's very interesting. My final question is, let's kind of lean into these local partnerships. You kind of highlighted the by Canada by local it definitely is having its yet again, ah it's day in the sun and this time feels like it's got some teeth.
Speaker: But, you know, there's a lot of businesses that are scrambling, looking for local partners in order to maybe tap into a supply chain that's healthier, but also in some cases just because they want to make some noise to sort of, you know, kind of fit in with the going crowd right now. But you guys have these long standing relationships. What's an example of a partnership? You mentioned the vertical greens. What's another example of a partnership that you're really proud of that ah supplies you guys locally?
Speaker: ah So I'll take one from Manitoba. Obviously, we work with suppliers everywhere across Canada. So I'll give some love to to the prairies. Eight Acres is a regenerative farmer based out of Manitoba.
Speaker: And so we get beef, grass-fed beef, organic beef, and they have a beautiful regenerative farming practice. And we actually had our head chef, Jordana, visiting the the farm last year, working on recipe collaborations.
Speaker: Great products, great recipes come together nicely. That's one of our amazing suppliers. In Montreal, I like to talk a little bit about Casa Ravioli. So this is not a farming partner, but a yeah fresh pasta ravioli partner based out of out of Montreal.
Speaker: And we started working with them, i think it was in 2018. And we've been able to grow with them over time. They were expanding, like we would literally see them expanding their business hand in hand with us, ah expanding our business.
Speaker: They're a second or third generation family fresh pasta supplier based in Montreal. And it's been amazing to grow with them. They've made investments in their business to be able to support our growth.
Speaker: But we're very lucky to have incredible ah suppliers across the country that are just as passionate as we are to push the envelope products. freshness, affordability, the highest quality products.
Speaker: And I would definitely ah shout out if if you're someone listening to to our podcast today, if you have a product that you think our customers would enjoy, please do reach out. We're easy to find on our website.
Speaker: And if you're running a next generation Canadian brand, we'd love to talk to you about partnering together and seeing if you can fit within our brand portfolio. Love it. That's so cool. So glad we had this chat, Jonathan. Thank you for the time and for all the creativity and inspiration, hard work your team puts in. Obviously, right now with the weather, there's maybe snowmobiles or snowshoes or cross country ski delivery going on. So ah blessings on your team on all this. But I think the reality is, is that.
Speaker: you know, inspiring people around nutritious food and better for you food and giving them experiences that they can be really proud of in the kitchen and not this sort of default too like what's going to be delivered to my door. That's, you know, was made 30 minutes ago and it's already you you know, stinking up some styrofoam container somewhere. it's ah It's great to see people enjoying food the way they are. And i think you guys have done a remarkable effort to helping Canadians get more connected to their food system, their food chain, which is wonderful. So thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks for sharing.
Speaker: Thanks for listening to this episode of aisle 42. You're going to love your homework on this one. Before you move on to your next podcast or playlist, open the app store, search for good food, all one word, and download the app that will make your meal prep dreams come true. This is what a sustainable, resilient, and convenient food system looks like.
Speaker: Beautiful. Okay, that's it for me. I'm Corbin Hebert from Ethical Food Group, and I'll see you in the future.
Speaker: Bye.
