Angie Quaale started her Langley gourmet food store 11 years ago after getting frustrated at the long trips she was making into Vancouver to find ingredients for dishes she wanted to make.
“I wanted to provide people with an option when they were shopping,” Quaale said.
“I spent most of my career before this in commercial and wholesale food sales, and I saw the small manufacturers and independent food producers being squeezed out of retail stores because they couldn’t afford to do business the way the big stores wanted them to do business.”
Quaale decided to offer cooking classes alongside the retail component of her business as a way to teach customers how to use the products.
“This was before the Food Network. ... We wanted to give people the confidence in their own kitchens.”
Eleven years later, Quaale is no longer the only retailer in the Fraser Valley selling gourmet food ingredients.
“It’s forced me to keep evolving,” she said.
Focusing on the basics, like having well-trained staff who can explain how to use the products, is important, as is defining how Quaale’s small store differs from large supermarkets.
“We sell very specific kinds of olive oil, and we can talk to customers about why we carry it. ... It’s not just ‘olive oil.’ We carry 25 different kinds of salt and we can tell you why and what you use it for.”
Quaale has also recently branched out into online shopping with a mail-order food subscription service.
“In Canada, people are just starting to online shop a little bit and have a high comfort level with it,” she said. “Starting that business, we were the first ones out of the gate doing anything similar.
“Now we’re shipping hundreds of boxes a month right across the country.”
Running a small business is a challenge, but that shouldn’t stop entrepreneurs from trying new things, Quaale said.
“When you have a small business, you have to live and learn. It’s not all going to work out.”
On hiring experts | “I’m not an accountant and if I did my own taxes, I’d be in prison. It costs money to hire a good accountant and sometimes when you own a small business, it’s hard to part with that money. But there is good value in parting with that money.”
Has a work or life challenge taught you a key career lesson? Contact Jen St. Denis at [email protected].
