Gordon Dean describes his business as \u201cthe little mouse that runs around with a bunch of elephants.\u201d<\/p>\n
The metaphor refers to Mike Dean Local Grocer, the group of community-based grocery stores plying its trade on terrain dominated by giant corporate food operations the likes of which include Metro, Empire and Galen Weston Jr. and Loblaw Companies.<\/p>\n
His father started the business in 1976 \u2013 Dean himself has been at it pretty much since he finished high school \u2013 and the Mike Dean brand has grown into five small-format rural-based grocery stores employing roughly 110 people.<\/p>\n
Having visited many such small stores in a variety of communities, I found the Bourget Mike Dean\u2019s warm and inviting \u2013 harkening to an earlier era where groceries were purchased at farmers\u2019 markets or small stores set up in residential neighbourhoods.<\/p>\n
The store is quaint, friendly and local. What I saw as I checked out the meat and produce sections and wandered the centre aisles was a food retailer that adds more value to the customer experience than any faceless corporate monolith in the big chains.<\/p>\n
That sensibility has very likely increased several orders of magnitude since the \u201cBuy Canadian \u2013 Bye American\u201d movement of late.<\/p>\n
Or has it? What Gordon Dean says, in fact, is that the Mike Dean approach hasn\u2019t really changed \u2013 except for the sudden appearance of \u201cProudly Canadian\u201d stickers on the shelves.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause of who we are and where we\u2019re from, which is eastern Ontario and western Quebec, this isn\u2019t a marketing gimmick,\u201d Dean says. \u201cIt\u2019s always been a reality that we\u2019ve always delivered on. The only way we can stay relevant is to connect to our consumer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Just about immediately when the U.S president started his erratic squawking about tariffs, the store met the logistical challenge of identifying Canadian products, designed the stickers they wanted and had about 20,000 of them manufactured at a local printer (at no little cost) and then applied them to the shelves.<\/p>\n
It is a nuanced distinction between \u201cProduct of Canada\u201d and \u201cMade in Canada,\u201d Dean acknowledges \u2013 even as someone who has been in the business virtually his entire life.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a food retailer, I understand the supply chain better than the vast majority of Canadians, and it\u2019s not always clear to me. It\u2019s not going to be clear for customers.\u201d<\/p>\n
You might imagine some sort of master list or searchable computer database of products made in Canada or products made in the U.S. with Canadian ingredients.<\/p>\n
But it doesn\u2019t exist, according to Dean.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe stickers went into our five stores within two or three days. We literally had a couple people in each store run the aisles, and we gave them pointers on what we wanted them on. There\u2019s several very good Canadian companies we do a lot of business with and that support us very well. They got their tags first, and then we literally had to start looking at the backs of products to see who is claiming to be Canadian,\u201d Dean says.<\/p>\n
Within that bit of labelling space, if you might call it that, between \u201cProduct of\u201d and \u201cMade in,\u201d the Mike Dean Local Grocer brand has taken an arguably defensible position: as long as the producer is a Canadian company who supports independent grocers like Mike Dean they got a sticker.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did not tag the big American companies who also produce product or make a product here. We could have, but we chose not to,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
During a quick wander through the Bourget aisles, I was, frankly, surprised at the raw number.<\/p>\n
To be sure, some customers don\u2019t care about Canada flag stickers and shop based on price only: that\u2019s understandable. While no store that I have visited has forced \u201cCanadian\u201d down a shopper\u2019s throat, it is remarkable to see how habits have changed \u2013 dramatically and overnight. I can\u2019t say if people sense an existential threat, but the shift has been obvious, agrees Dean.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s absolutely traction on it. Even with the stickers or even if they know it\u2019s a Canadian product, people are flipping products over to read the labels more than they ever have, to a noticeable point.\u201d<\/p>\n
Looking at the tidy and well-organized meat counter, it\u2019s important to note that all the products \u2013 \u201c100 percent, not 99 per cent,\u201d Dean stresses \u2013 are Canadian-sourced and most from this part of the province. They even break down many of the cuts in-house each day and package it freshly.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s not something we play with,\u201d he adds. \u201cWe\u2019re located in agricultural communities, and that\u2019s our bread and butter. It would be illogical and irresponsible for me to sell American chicken or pork or beef when you sell groceries in small-town rural Ontario.\u201d<\/p>\n
I asked Dean if the stickers signify anything really new at his grocery stores when it comes to running the business in smaller communities: he says yes and no and seems to imply that the mouse is nimble around elephants.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s business as usual with a big star beside the fact that we\u2019re doubling down on it. There\u2019s market instability, and there is going to be some ugliness in the big wide world, but as a rural Ontarian I actually see that there\u2019s more opportunity than risk.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dean, based on his experience in the food industry, suggests that Canadians are in this together and need to change how we do food business and enliven markets and trade.<\/p>\n
Retailers, manufacturers and customers, if they hold their resolve, will come out \u201cthe other side\u201d having built a better Canadian and local food supply chain and stronger food production that has, he hopes, implemented exports and trade to more than a single large customer.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere will be pain along the way, but the end result will be a stronger food-supply network. When this is all over with, we\u2019re going to look in the rearview mirror and say these are steps we should have taken a long time ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
Food writer Andrew Coppolino lives in Rockland. He is the author of \u201cFarm to Table\u201d and co-author of \u201cCooking with Shakespeare.\u201d Follow him on Instagram @andrewcoppolino.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Gordon Dean describes his business as \u201cthe little mouse that runs around with a bunch of elephants.\u201d The metaphor refers to Mike Dean Local Grocer, the group of community-based grocery stores plying its trade on terrain dominated by giant corporate food operations the likes of which include Metro, Empire and Galen Weston Jr. and Loblaw […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":105271,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-affaires"],"acf":[],"featured_media_global":[],"yoast_head":"\n