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'Are we nuts?' Meet Canadians who started businesses during the pandemic – CBC.ca
Even with the country in lockdown, a number of Canadian entrepreneurs are plunging ahead with new ventures.
Some are focusing their startup on issues related directly to the virus.
Others had begun to put business plans into action just before the pandemic hit, and it wasn’t possible to pull back.
Still others find that the new, challenging environment actually presents an advantage for their startup.
Here are some of their stories.
Virtual funeral services
Effie Anolik, 30, of Toronto doesn’t have a background in the funeral business. She worked for Shopify, the e-commerce platform, for four years. But when her father died two years ago, she was surprised that other than a website, the funeral home offered next-to-no online services.
“You have to go to the funeral home in person to plan a funeral,” said Anolik. “My family had to go there to process the credit card payment. It seemed like an interaction that could have happened online.”
She figured funeral homes needed new, consumer-friendly technology, and started a company to create back office software.
But this month she’s shifted gears, to go direct to consumers.
“Right now, families are really out of options, and don’t know how to move forward with some sort of gathering,” she said.
Her new company, PlanaFuneral.com, offers a free phone consultation to start, while other services range from $200 to $400. Those services include:
- Customized “virtual funerals” that include full event management, invites, and a recording of the online event.
- A slideshow or video of the deceased family member’s life.
- Hosting services for the gathering over Zoom, the conference platform.
- Consultation with family and friends who may want to give a eulogy or make a presentation.
- If there is to be a burial, it can be livestreamed so that family and friends can feel present.
In the few days since the company has been up and running, Anolik has heard from several potential clients — including someone in New York City who has been unable to arrange a cremation and wants help. She expects demand to increase and says her small team is ready to handle it.
She’ll have competition. Some Canadian funeral homes have started to organize virtual mourning services during the pandemic as well.
Nonetheless, Anolik is convinced her venture has a future, even when people are once again able to gather to pay respects.
“There will still be a need for virtual gatherings to bring everyone together,” she says. “Virtual gatherings can include guests who may have not been able to attend in the traditional sense, due to distance and cost.”
She intends to add other services to help bereaved families, such as assisting with the closure of bank accounts and social media profiles, as well as subscriptions and contracts that need to be cancelled.
“There’s a lot to navigate,” she said.
Telemedicine for pets
Toronto-based Kerri-Lynn McAllister is turning her love of animals into a new business. A founding member of Ratehub.ca, the popular financial product comparison website, last fall she started Pawzy, an online resource for pet health and wellness.
Now she’s launching Pawzy Telehealth, a new branch of the business that provides a teleconferencing system designed specifically for virtual visits to the veterinarian.
“A lot of vets have had to reduce their hours and services to emergency care,” said McAllister. “And as a result, pets don’t have access to the same level of care that they otherwise would.”
Pet owners don’t pay for the service. Instead, vet clinics sign up and pay a monthly fee, in order to continue seeing customers and their pets, and keep their revenue stream flowing.
“We’re doing a free COVID offer during the next two months, but afterwards there will be a subscription fee for the software of $99 a month per clinic,” she said.
In the next couple of weeks, McAllister plans to launch a more consumer-focused service, where Canadians anywhere can connect with a vet at any time. “It doesn’t have to be a service offered by their own vet, it will be enabled for any Canadian to use.”
Food delivery
Chef Eric Rogers of Toronto had been working with a partner prior to the COVID-19 crisis to open Riverside Kitchen, a so-called ghost kitchen, a delivery-only service that would offer four menus of food through apps such as UberEats, DoorDash and SkipTheDishes.
A ghost kitchen is basically a restaurant minus the tables, waiters and diners. It’s all about the back of house production of food for delivery.
“We did a lot of research, and the numbers coming out of the States showed the virtual or ghost kitchens were basically doubling their volume of business every year,” said Rogers. “It’s one of the fastest growing segments of the food industry.”
They were planning to launch in April, but that’s now been delayed a month due to the pandemic. Rogers and his partner had intended to rent an industrial kitchen, but he now suspects they’ll soon have other, less expensive options.
“There’s going to be a lot of restaurant failures,” he said. “We have approached two landlords to say what we might offer you is a bridge lease. If we commit to six months or a year, while they find a new restaurant tenant, we would pay to cover off their utilities. We won’t pay full pop, but they’ll get some income.”
Meanwhile, he and his partner, Josh Peace, have been making sample dishes of their food lines in order to photograph them for the app companies. Those lines include hand-crafted sandwiches, a BBQ smokehouse, a South American menu, and a family dinner project.
“We’ve certainly looked at each other every so often and asked each other, ‘Are we nuts?’ But delivery was already growing exponentially and now it’s the only trick in town. No one can go to a restaurant.”
He said he believes the home-delivery trend will keep growing, as it may take some time before people are eager to dine out again.
A brand new advertising agency
It’s fair to say there’s never an ideal time to launch a new advertising agency, given the industry is already crowded and fiercely competitive. But Beverley Hammond and her four Toronto-based co-founders had no idea a pandemic was coming when they banded together to form Broken Heart Love Affair, their unusually named firm.
“We started working on it in the fall,” she said. “And my partners, some of the top talent in the country, gave notice at their agencies.”
With chief creative officers from big-name agencies such as Cossette and BBDO on the founding team, it might have made sense to turn around and ask for their jobs back, once it became clear the pandemic was about to take a devastating toll on the economy.
But Hammond says that wasn’t possible — legal agreements had been signed.
“The train had left the station. We were off and running.”
By the time the company launched officially on March 27, the group had to wear gloves and masks, and bring disinfectant wipes to sign the Broken Heart Love Affair shareholder agreement.
The agency has already signed Kids Help Phone, Everest Insurance and Kruger, a paper product company, as clients.
“We are in the midst of eight new business opportunities right now. That’s a lot in normal times. It’s inexplicable now,” she said. The firm even signed a new client on Easter Sunday. “There doesn’t seem to be any delineation between weekdays and weekends right now.”
Despite that promising start, Hammond admits it’s a scary time. In addition to the five co-founders, four employees have been hired and salaries need to be paid.
But as a longtime entrepreneur, Hammond isn’t fazed.
“I’ve lived with that kind of pressure before, like anyone starting a business.”
News
We're still stockpiling reusable bags. Big grocers have adopted solutions, but experts have concerns – CBC News
Canada’s plastic bag ban has had an unintended consequence: a proliferation of reusable bags piling up in basements, closets and, eventually, landfills.
“They’re everywhere,” said environmental researcher Tony Walker. “We’re drowning in them, and we shouldn’t be.”
To combat the problem, several of Canada’s big grocers have introduced solutions. Last week, Walmart launched a free national recycling pilot program for the retailer’s reusable blue bags. Competitors Sobeys and chains owned by Loblaw Companies Ltd. use recyclable paper bags for grocery delivery.
But some environmental experts argue that paper bags are also problematic and that the best solutions are those that help customers actually reuse their reusable bags.
“We just can’t keep giving [them] out,” said Walker, a professor at Dalhousie University’s School for Resource and Environmental Studies in Halifax. “We’re only meant to have a few of them, and we’re meant to use them until they fall apart.”
In late 2022, the federal government rolled out a ban on the manufacture, import and sale of several single-use plastics, including checkout bags. The regulations are being contested in court, but in the meantime, they remain in effect.
The regulations have made single-use shopping bags scarce in Canada, but they’ve also led to the proliferation of reusable bags, especially for grocery delivery.
“It just creates more waste, which is what we’re trying to avoid in the first place,” Walmart customer Udi Sela said in a CBC News interview in late 2022.
At the time, Sela, who lives in Maple, Ont., estimated his family had acquired about 300 reusable Walmart bags via grocery delivery.
“We can’t return them, we can’t do much with them.”
Now, a little more than a year later, Walmart has launched a pilot project to address the problem.
It allows customers to pack up their unwanted reusable Walmart blue bags and ship them — at no charge — to a facility where they’ll get a second life.
How it works
According to Walmart, bags in good condition will be laundered and donated to charity, primarily Food Banks Canada. Damaged bags will get recycled into other materials. Reusable bags typically can’t go in blue bins because they’re costly and difficult to recycle.
Customers must sign up for Walmart’s program, and enrolment is limited.
Jennifer Barbazza, Walmart’s senior manager of sustainability, said the retailer will fine-tune the details as the program progresses.
“[We] know that some customers have more reusable bags than maybe they need,” she said. “One of the things that we’re really excited to learn about from the pilot is customer acceptance and customer feedback.”
Reusable bags are living rent free in closets and car trunks across the country. Most major retailers made the switch away from single-use plastic bags about a year ago, but it’s taking time for some customers to catch on. They’re forgetting to bring their bags with them, and buying more every week.
Udi Sela has already signed up.
“I definitely think it’s a step in the right direction,” he said in an interview on Friday. “It’s something that needed to be done a while ago. God knows we’ve got a ton of bags kind of piled up.”
He said he’s concerned that some customers may find mailing the bags a hurdle. However, it’s not deterring Sela, who soon plans to ship hundreds.
Passing the buck?
Not everyone is keen on Walmart’s project. Emily Alfred, a waste campaigner with Toronto Environmental Alliance, said donating the bags to the food bank is just passing on the problem.
“We need to remove waste from the system entirely, and just sending these somewhere else for someone else to deal with is not really a solution,” she said.
Alfred said a better option is a program Walmart piloted in Guelph, Ont., in 2022. For a fee, customers could check out reusable bags from an in-store kiosk and later return them to be cleaned and reused.
“That’s a real circular reuse system,” she said.
Walmart’s Barbazza said the retailer is continuing to explore different reusable bag programs, including ones placed in stores.
She also said she’s confident Canada’s food banks will make good use of the bags.
“There’s definitely a need for sturdy items to distribute materials to the food bank clients.”
The paper problem
Among Canada’s major grocers, only Walmart offers a reusable bag program for all customers.
Loblaw recently switched from reusable to recyclable paper bags for grocery delivery. Sobeys did not respond to requests for comment, but according to its website, the grocer also uses paper bags and “reusable options” for home delivery.
Several environmental experts say paper bags aren’t a good solution, because their production leaves a sizable carbon footprint.
“Paper bags are a problem,” Alfred said. “It takes a lot of energy to recycle paper, takes a lot of trees and energy to make new paper.”
Loblaw said it continues to explore a variety of more sustainable solutions. “It’s a challenge we’re committed to addressing,” spokesperson Dave Bauer said in an email.
Both Walker and Alfred applaud Metro for its grocery delivery program, because the grocer, which operates in Ontario and Quebec, reuses delivery materials.
Metro said customers can get their goods delivered in a cardboard box or reusable bags, which can be returned and used for another delivery. Or customers can opt for a plastic bin and remove their groceries from it upon arrival.
Metro does not offer similar programs for in-store shoppers.
Alfred said the federal government should introduce regulations that mandate retailers adopt effective reusable bag programs for all customers.
“It’s up to our governments and people to demand that these companies do better,” she said.
But Walker suggested that the regulations would be hard to enforce and that incentives could be a better tactic.
For example, if retailers increased the price of reusable bags, shoppers might be less likely to forget them when they head to the store, he said.
“When the cost is a disincentive to do an activity, people change their behaviour.”
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CTV National News: Honda’s big move in Canada CTV News
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Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland says she thinks unhappy premiers will come around on measures in the federal budget that touch on provincial legislation, even as they push back.
At an event in Toronto on Sunday, Freeland — who presented the federal budget on Tuesday — said the national government needs to push ahead on such issues as housing and she was “extremely optimistic” premiers would choose to co-operate.
“Housing is a national challenge, and the federal government needs to be leading the charge,” she said.
“My own experience has been when there are big issues that really matter to Canadians, after all the sound and the fury, people are prepared to roll up their sleeves and find a win-win outcome for Canadians.”
Several premiers have pushed back against the federal government in recent months and again after the budget was released on the grounds that some measures touch on provincial jurisdiction.
This week’s federal budget has premiers lashing out at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over a planned increase to capital gains taxes as well as what they say is overstepping on infrastructure and pharmacare.
In a letter released Friday by the Council of the Federation, which represents the leaders of all 13 provinces and territories, the premiers said Ottawa should have consulted them more ahead of the budget.
Individual premiers have shared more pointed critiques.
“It’s a never-ending spending platform that we’ve seen now for the last 10 years,” New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs said on CBC’s Power & Politics on Friday.
“My initial thoughts about the federal budget are that they are overtaxing, overspending, overborrowing and over interfering in provincial affairs,” Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said earlier this week.
Alberta has clashed with the government repeatedly over housing. Smith introduced legislation earlier this month that would require provincial oversight of deals made between municipalities and the federal government, including for future agreements around federal housing funds.
At Issue this week: The Liberals work to sell their multibillion-dollar spending plan and capital gains tax hike. Pierre Poilievre tells Radio-Canada what he thinks of the federal budget. And another province pushes back on the carbon tax.
Freeland said on Sunday that, as an example, the federal child-care program negotiated through a series of deals with provinces and territories showed that co-operation was possible.
Capital gains tax changes criticized
The federal government has also faced some opposition on what was perhaps the most prominent measure revealed on budget day: changes to Canada’s capital gains tax rules. The government has proposed raising the inclusion rate to 67 per cent on capital gains above $250,000 for individuals.
“The 21st-century winner-takes-all-economy is making those at the very top richer, while too many middle-class Canadians are struggling,” Freeland said Sunday, adding the government was asking wealthy Canadians to pay their “fair share.”
“We do need to ensure that we have some revenue coming in. This is a very limited way of ensuring that that occurs,” Treasury Board President Anita Anand said in an interview on Rosemary Barton Live on Sunday.
Treasury Board President Anita Anand joins CBC chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton to talk about the federal budget and its focus on young Canadians — as well as the criticism it’s receiving.
Critics have raised concerns that the changes could result in reduced investment or capital flight.
“The big concern right now … is this going to have a detrimental impact to the progress we’re trying to make in making Canada a hub for innovation,” said Kirk Simpson, CEO of the tech company goConfirm, in a separate interview on Rosemary Barton Live.
“With productivity the way that it is, we want more capital, not less, flowing into business innovation,” Simpson told CBC chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton.
Freeland said Sunday that the changes will affect very few Canadian individuals — the government estimates 0.13 per cent — and the revenue will go to pay for investments in areas like housing.
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