A community fundraising effort is underway to establish a boutique grocery store in the downtown.
A location has not been decided on by proponents Laura Sapergia and Diandra Jurkic-Walls but they want the doors to be open sometime in September and they want the shelves to be stocked with as much local produce as the region can deliver.
They are looking for 800 to 1,000 square feet of retail space. The sign over the door will read Home Sweet Home (HSH) Grocery.
"It has to be in the downtown. Everything great in Prince George is happening downtown, right now, and it's an area needing a grocery store," Sapergia said.
"Part of what we want to have within the store is a commercial kitchen as well, so foods can also be made on-site," said Jurkic-Walls.
Pre-made food items would share the shelves with dried, canned, smoked, and fresh produce of all kinds. They also anticipate soaps, cheese, sausages, gluten-conscious items and vegan-conscious items in the store's inventory.
Sapergia and Jurkic-Walls are modelling their operation on the farmer's market model, but tailored for those producers who want to make their wares available for sale more often than once a week.
"Right now a farmer has limited options," Sapergia said. "The farmers market is great, it really fosters the local food industry, but the next step a farmer has to take is Save-On-Foods and that's an incredible amount of volume. Most can't make that commitment, there needs to be an in-between stage,and that is what we are doing."
HSH will also be a place to sit down and have a coffee. A deal has already been struck with 49th Parallel Coffee, a B.C.-based importer and custom roaster that is thrilled to link with a project like this.
"It is wonderful to have your suppliers share the same ethos as you," said Jurkic-Walls.
Through a new venture capital option called crowdfunding, the HSH operation is getting donations for startup leveraging from people in the community who want to add their contribution to getting the store off the ground. A website called indigogo.com provides a payment platform. The two proponents are trying to raise $10,000 in the next 36 days. In the first two days, with only word-of-mouth advertising, they had gotten $620 in pledges. (Go to www.indiegogo.com/projects/hsh-grocery-store to contribute.)
The two entrepreneurs know that the fresh produce is going to wax and wane according to the growing season, but they hope to balance that off with some surprising fruits and vegetables that are available in the winter, and they plan to change the emphasis to preserves when the fields are frozen. If certain staple products are not available from local producers, they are not against moving out to regional or provincial producers, as long the environmental footprint is small.
"People want to support organic producers, but in Prince George that means trucking a lot of things in from California," Sapergia said. "Maybe the local farmer isn't certified organic, but you can see the field it's grown in and you can see how the farmer does it with your own eyes. So we think that's better, there is a place for that local farmer's produce in the environmental considerations we are trying to make."
Their website is www.yerhomesweethome.com and they also have a Facebook page, for more information.
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