Opening up during the lockdown

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/11/2020 (2003 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Vita Health Fresh Market’s seventh store in the city in Linden Ridge is a bit of a homecoming for the Winnipeg family-owned retailer.

About 10 years ago, Vita Health had a small natural supplements store in the area but closed it when the company started transitioning to its current larger grocery format.

Ever since, company president Mathew Holtmann said they have been trying to line up a location in the bustling, growing, well-heeled neighbourhood where his market research showed it was where Vita Health was getting the fewest dollars per household of any community in the city.

But the problem was there were already plenty of large grocery stores in the area which would have exclusivity features in their leases, blocking smaller competitors like Vita Health from moving into the same centre.

“We sell groceries and trade in a lot of the same items they do,” he said. “It left a big hole for us in the south end of the city.”

Holtmann was so pleased to have the opportunity to move in to Linden Ridge, the company committed to a two-year lead time on a purpose-built, 5,000-square-foot store.

But that left them in the unusual situation of opening a brand-new store in the middle of a code red pandemic lockdown.

“It’s crazy,” Holtmann said. “Who would ever have imagined this.”

Having said that, the other stores have opened the whole time and the company has come to embrace its status as an essential service.

“We did not think of ourselves as essential workers,” he said. “Then all of a sudden we were.”

Still, had its Linden Ridge store (at 1751 Kenaston Blvd.) not been in the works long before the COVID pandemic was even imagined Holtmann said they probably would not be opening during this current lockdown.

But the past several months proved to be excellent prep for opening a store now. The company had time to understand the staff training required and ensure all the protocols are in place.

“We’re well-versed after having done it for months,” he said. “We’ve got all the sanitization stations, our staff understands how to limit the number of customers and we’re able to get custom plexiglass shields for the tills and not having to “MacGyver” them on the spot. We’re much better equipped.”

While Vita Health might look like a small local player in the grocery market, it has been in the retail trade in Winnipeg for 80 years.

Holtmann’s grandfather, G.W. Seier, started Vita Health in 1936 selling herbs and natural remedies that the company also made. The manufacturing side grew even larger than the retail and it was sold in 1997. (The large private label over-the-counter pharmaceutical manufacturer still operates in the city and is still called Vita Health Products Inc. It has changed hands a couple of times since then and is owned by a large private equity firm.)

Holtmann’s father kept the retail business and in the 2000s they started to transition it into its current grocery/natural health products format. 

The new store features wide aisles, high ceilings and modern colours and is modelled on a winning format.

Growing consumer demand for organic and natural grocery products means more of those products are also showing up in the mass-market retailers providing greater consumer awareness.

But rather than search aisle after aisle in the superstores for a couple of products, Holtmann believes Vita Health attracts customers with the knowledge that it has a whole curated store with nothing but clean, natural and organic products. And its longstanding expertise in the supplement field makes it a reliable home for consumers especially now that more than 70 per cent of Canadians use some sort of natural health product supplement.

Every Vita Health store has a certified natural products adviser on staff and every supplement sold has a natural product number, which means it is approved for sale by Health Canada.

Business has been up during the pandemic and Holtmann said he’s extremely grateful and humbled to be in the business he’s in.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca