It’s no surprise that our grocery shopping habits have changed since we began the age of the suburban sprawl. For anyone living in a modern suburb, driving the car to a big supermarket once a week and loading up your cart is part of everyday life, and even families in older parts of towns have become used to corner stores being nothing but a place to buy a coffee, junkie snacks and a lotto ticket on your way to or from work. For my show today on Island Artisans, I visited a couple of neighbourhood grocery stores that are trying to put local flavour back onto the shopping list.
Farmers markets have become more of a go-to place to find local foods these days, but there are other options, especially right here in Victoria with the two-year old Niagara Grocery in James Bay and the brand-spanking new Fairfield Market in…yes, Fairfield. They may be fairly new corner grocery stores, but the buildings themselves are full of history. Niagara Grocery was discovered by Ken Winchester and Jennfier McKimmie, refugees from the corporate world looking for something different to do. Ken discovered Niagara Grocery is Victoria’s oldest grocery store, it was founded in 1906, but had fallen on rough times as of late with the change in our shopping habits.
Winchester says, "Well, it was pretty grim in here, we basically worked for 40 days and 40 nights to clean it up and we were always discovering issues with the water and vents and so on. The store had been pretty successful over the years, but after wartime it started going downhill and morphing into the 'corner smokes' store. There used to be over two hundred corner grocery stores in Victoria and now there are maybe six or eight. Then this neighbourhood started to come back with more interest in local foods so that's why we're trying to save two of these old stores."
When you approach these stores you definitely get that old-time grocery feel from them, they are not all shiny and metal and antiseptic feeling and they really seem to fit in with the neighbourhood and in these buildings that have stood as part of the city for so many years. They’re notable for what they don’t have, no lotto tickets(at Fairfield), cigarettes, videos and porn magazines, but also very notable for what they do have….local and organic groceries whenever possible, starting with honey extracted from beehives just down the street and spreading out from there.
I brought in a few things that I found on the shelves this afternoon before I headed over to the CBC Radio Studios, including two different types of local kale, multigrain bread and granola clusters from Portofino Bakery and candied nuts from Butler Hazelnut Farm in Saanichton.
Why Fairfield so soon after starting in James Bay? To start with they had lots of people who were traveling to Fairfield from James Bay to do their shopping…and when they found out that the bicycle shop in this old building was moving next door they thought it was too great an opportunity to pass up. The grocery is right opposite to where the Moss Street Market takes place, and some people have asked Ken why he would locate right next to what could be seen as a competitor. Turns out many of the farmers at that market are Ken and Jennifer’s suppliers, so if they have food left over from their Saturday market day they will just sell it to Ken, who is open every day to help them sell their produce.
The other reason to expand their reach is that there is a growing awareness and demand for local food.
Ken and Jennifer will probably not expand beyond the two locations, they have a young family and running two shops now is stretching them to the max, but Ken says what they might like to do is become consultants to help other people open up more stores just like this. Think of all those little corner video stores that are probably closing up any time soon…they probably used to be some of those over 200 grocery stores that once served Victoria!
