How I turned my Small Business into a successful billion-dollar brand

As Co-Founder, Chairman & CEO of Goodfood (www.makegoodfood.ca), Jonathan leads Canada’s largest independent online grocery company, which became a billion-dollar brand in 2021. Goodfood’s mission is to make the impossible come true, from farm to kitchen, by enabling members to do their weekly meal planning and grocery shopping in less than 1 minute.

After graduating with honors from McGill University, Jonathan joined RBC’s investment banking team in Montréal in 2010, advising retailers on mergers and acquisitions, capital raises, and strategic partnerships. He co-founded MTL Capital LLC in 2013, a privately held entrepreneurial investment firm, and in 2014 he co-founded Goodfood. In 2017, Mr. Ferrari was named one of Canada’s Top 40 Under 40. This national award celebrates the exceptional achievements of Canadians in leadership, innovation, and community involvement. In 2018, Mr. Ferrari was named EY young entrepreneur of the year. Mr. Ferrari is a Montréal native.

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What is the mission and vision of Goodfood? What was the idea behind Goodfood?

Goodfood was originally an expression of my three passions: food, tech, and entrepreneurship. My business partner Neil Cuggy and I set out on a mission to change the way Canadians get food on the table every day.

Over the years, we’ve evolved to democratize food & grocery delivery for Canadians coast to coast. We want to free Canadians from the tyranny of meal planning and 2.5 grocery trips per week!

Today, Goodfood’s vision is to be in every kitchen every day by enabling members to complete their grocery shopping and meal planning in minutes, all while providing Goodfood members access to a unique selection of online products.

We also offer exclusive pricing made possible by our world-class direct-to-consumer infrastructure and technology that eliminate food waste and costly retail overhead.

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Can you elaborate on what gaps you are trying to fill with Goodfood and why should people place their trust in you rather than your competitors?

Our thinking came from our own needs as consumers planning our own meals. That’s how we developed the idea behind Goodfood…Delicious, easy recipes featuring pre-measured ingredients that are packaged and sent to customers, who then only need to follow the instructions in order to get cooking.

At the highest level, we noticed a problem related to the food supply chain. Basically, between the farm, the distributor, and the grocery store, 20 percent of perishable food items in grocery stores are wasted. We believed it was possible to improve on that.

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What do you do differently that enables you to become a billion-dollar brand in 2021?

Our results reflect the benefits of our leading and differentiated ready-to-cook offering and growing grocery selection. Along with our same-day fulfillment capabilities in key markets, this enables us to drive larger basket sizes and higher-order frequency from our increasingly loyal and engaged members.

With the growth of the online grocery market continuing to accelerate, we deploy capital at an accelerating pace to enhance our operations across the country and remain focused on building the optimal footprint of centralized production facilities and local fulfillment centers to enable faster delivery times and greater product choice to Canadian households from coast to coast.

As a company, we also aim to have a positive impact on our communities. My team and I are working on the environmental impact of packaging by internally developing solutions that are reusable and biodegradable. In general, people are more and more aware of the environmental impact of businesses.

Every entrepreneur needs to think about that both from a personal point of view and for the company, and I think that is something that makes us stand out.

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How is the brand doing some notable work in the realms of tech innovation?

Back in June, we announced our first tech-enabled local fulfillment center in Ottawa with automation capabilities to deliver 4,000 products on a same-day or faster basis.

The newly leased fulfillment center will use state-of-the-art technology and automation to ensure the fast and cost-effective processing of customer orders and it will be supported by technology including Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Azure cloud computing solutions, in addition to Goodfood proprietary software for order orchestration and delivery optimization.

Our continued collaboration with Microsoft to build customized technology solutions enables our cutting-edge order orchestration and delivery processes. We will also collaborate on artificial intelligence projects aimed at enhancing overall supply chain planning and execution.

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How has Goodfood evolved rapidly?

Since going public in 2017, Goodfood has evolved significantly. Goodfood has grown from a ready-to-cook meal kit company with a handful of recipes to now building out Canada’s leading on-demand grocery delivery network, anchored by a 30 recipe deep ready-to-cook offering that changes weekly, a growing grocery product selection, and an expanding purpose-built footprint with currently approximately 800,000 square feet spread across nine facilities from coast to coast.

As we continue our evolution, our strong execution has allowed us to make significant progress on three key pillars required to build Canada’s leading on-demand online grocery network and ultimately drive our next phase of growth: Our selection of grocery products, delivery speed, and our investment in our differentiated technology platform.

As as we bring these three pillars together, coupled with continuing to provide Canadians with their meal solutions, we are uniquely positioned to address the growing online segment over the next several years.

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Do you have any suggestions for small business owners who are finding it difficult to pull through during these tough times?

For someone who is starting out in a new job or startup, it is important to employ this same practice each morning – writing down your top priority and accomplishing it. Even if you are being pulled in multiple directions and putting out fires, every day can be counted as a success by crossing off that top priority task.

At Goodfood, we analyze and talk about how 80 percent of our results and success, come from 20 percent of our effort. The challenge is figuring out what part of our collective effort contributes to the 20 percent that has the biggest impact.

 As a result, we have developed a process where the 10 members of our executive team meet every day from 11:59 am -12:14 p.m. to discuss one piece of good news and our top priority for the day. We have found this to be instrumental in keeping accountable to each other and laser-focused on accomplishing goals.