GOODLOCAL
Everything good, everything local, everything in one place By Pat St. Germain GOOD Company In
W hen entrepreneurs Obby Khan and Ali Esmail put their heads together last year to come up with a way to support local business, it was the start of something good. Serial civic booster Khan, who owns Green Carrot Juice Company and mul- tiple Shawarma Khan restaurants, says the overwhelming response to online shopping portal Goodlocal.ca was a “very pleasant and very stressful sur- prise,” when it launched in November. “I thought this was going to run out of the back of one of my restaurants — it was going to be 20 or 30 orders a week and just kinda help out a little bit of local businesses and give people another avenue to shop, and it’s just blown up,” he says. “It was just Ali and I at the beginning. We’re just growing and growing.” By late April, GoodLocal had eight full-time employees, and had signed up some 400 vendors, with more than 10,000 items on the website. There’s everything from craft beer and coffee to groceries, toys, pet supplies, yoga pants, bannock, mukluks, leopard-print baby
"The overwhelming response to online shopping portal Goodlocal.ca was a “very pleasant and very stressful surprise."
buntings and — drum roll, please — mac- and-cheese casseroles. “There’s a whole array of products that you would not think are either made locally or sold by local businesses,” Khan says. “We just need to create awareness about it.” The one-stop experience lets customers support multiple businesses with ease, which was the point from the start. “There wasn’t one place to go and buy from 10 different people. You’d have to go to 10 different stores — if they were open.” It’s a win for makers and vendors, too. Many small business operators don’t have the time, energy or expertise to handle marketing and online sales, let alone delivery. GoodLocal does it all. At the same time, it’s creating new jobs, saving existing jobs and putting money back into the local economy. “We’ve done over, I think $650,000 in sales, directly back into the hands of local businesses,” says Khan. “There are a lot — 99% of our vendors are so grateful for what we’re doing and I’m grateful for what Winnipeggers are doing so it goes around.”
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Photos by Darcy Finley
SPRING 2021
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