Grocery chain now offers a variety of Ontario-grown meats

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

by SUSAN MANN

Grocery retailer Metro Ontario Inc. has started carrying Ontario organic pork, chicken and conventionally produced lamb and has launched the products with a feature in its weekly flyer.

Jocelyne Martineau, Metro communications manager, says the organic pork and chicken plus the lamb will be available permanently in the stores. “The full selection is available to all of our Metro stores but they’re not all required to carry the full selection,” she says.

Metro has 147 stores in Ontario. Its conventional stores are called Metro while the discount establishments are called Food Basics. The grocery retailer distributes four million flyers weekly.

Ted Soudant, Field Gate Organics Inc. president, says featuring Ontario organic pork in Metro’s weekly flyer has boosted sales. Field Gate Organics is the organic pork supplier for Metro.

He says the amount that pork sales increased is confidential. But the feature, which runs this week until Thursday, also led to Field Gate hiring more people to help handle the increased order from Metro and “it helped the farming community also. There are benefits right across the board for Ontario with Metro doing this.”

Soudant says the Metro flyer feature is a “big plus” for the farming community and the organic industry. Field Gate is supplying the organic pork, while Yorkshire Valley Farms is supplying the organic chicken and the lamb is being provided by White Veal Meat Packers Ltd. BF