Specialty food chains chart ambitious growth across region
Specialty food retailers are expanding in the Edmonton region with boutique-type experiences that, in at least two cases, are backed by established companies with cash and big ambition.
L'OCA Quality Market opened its second location in less than a year on Jan. 31 after its flagship shop on Baseline Road in Sherwood Park went live last May. The new outpost is within the former home of Andy's Valleyview IGA in the Parkview neighbourhood.
"(Between) opening the two stores in 266 days and and trying to organize the supply chain and rally a couple hundred staff and start up restaurants and grocery stores, L'OCA consumes a fair bit of my time," Ben Cochrane, a partner in L'OCA, told Taproot. "I don't sleep a lot."
Cochrane is also a senior vice-president at Go Auto, a car dealership business founded and headquartered in Edmonton that now has more than 60 locations in Canada and the United States. Some of his colleagues at Go Auto are personal investors in L'OCA, including the Priestner family, whose Mike Priestner founded the Mike Priestner Auto Group in 1996, which became Go Auto in 2008. The family has generational business expertise in the auto industry and supports local charities, including $1 million for Boyle Street Community Services in 2022.
From day one, the investors in L'OCA have aimed to scale. "We didn't want to dip our toes into the market, build that very large store out in Sherwood Park and then stop there," Cochrane said. "We wanted to do food differently, and with that, do it everywhere."
L'OCA, which is Italian for "the goose," is built on the "old world tradition" of European markets, Cochrane said. The concept was also influenced by farmers' markets and the viral Erewhon, an uber-pricey grocer from Los Angeles — all done with "an Albertan touch." Both locations have restaurant concepts, though the new one is based more around a service counter than the location in Sherwood Park. Another difference between the two is that Parkview, which also serves the neighbourhood of Crestwood, has filled the void left by the IGA, which was beloved by Edmonton's Jewish community for its robust selection of kosher foods and sponsorship of events. L'OCA has retained most of Andy's staff and all of its kosher inventory, and even added to it.
"We've actually expanded on what they they were offering," Cochrane said. "We have the full selection of everything they had before and now (even) more shelf space. We've worked very closely with the community there. We've been listening to what they want to see and brought a lot of stuff in."
Similar to the 22,000-square-foot Parkview store, the 48,000-square-foot L'OCA in Sherwood Park replaced a former store (in that case a Rona). Cochrane said Sherwood Park offered some "breathing room" as a first outpost compared to Edmonton's more saturated grocery market — even if he announced the Parkview plans the same month that L'OCA 1.0 opened.
L'OCA isn't alone as a specialty food retailer that's charting ambitious growth in the Edmonton region. In 2023, the first Ribeye Butcher Shop, which is one of several new-ish butcher shops in Edmonton, opened in St. Albert, and by last year the company launched its seventh location in Calgary. In between these bookends, Ribeye has opened four shops offering specialty meat and prepared foods in the Edmonton region, with locations in Manning, Windermere, Terra Losa, and Sherwood Park. It has a further store in Airdrie.
Like L'OCA, none of Ribeye's shops are currently located in Edmonton's core, but that may change, co-owner Sam Gundy told Taproot.
"We have chosen the sites we have because we have great relationships with the landlord already through associated businesses," Gundy said. "That being said, we are looking at the core in Edmonton and Calgary … I think that there is a tremendous opportunity in downtown Edmonton or downtown Calgary. It doesn't have to be 18(,000) or 20,000 square feet, which is what the Mahogany (in Calgary) store is. We can do a little micro store for 900 square feet, and still pack it with all the great products that we serve at all the other stores."
