Delivery, with a local twist

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This article was published 05/04/2021 (1640 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A few years ago, Joshua Vatnsdal was visiting his family cottage in rural Manitoba when he had an unshakable idea.

“The local store just closed in the area and everyone was left with very few places to go get their food — nothing healthy and everything you could get being packaged, big-box-store items,” he told the Free Press Sunday. “I immediately thought, how nice would it be to have a mobile version of local items for people to purchase?”

Like countless other business plans cracked up at the dinner table, Vatnsdal put “that grandiosity” to bed. It wasn’t until the economic stupor caused by the COVID-19 pandemic that he realized maybe his idea wasn’t so far-fetched after all.

As a carrier for Canada Post, he couldn’t help but notice just how many Amazon orders among planeloads of packages he would unload every single day. “Every one of them was a reminder of action I could be taking to help local businesses, while bigger stores flourished,” Vatnsdal said.

Enter: Prairie Flavours — a new venture that’s an online company promising to deliver and sell only Manitoba-made products — the idea being that anytime someone orders a product, Vatnsdal will either deliver it to them or set up a mobile shop for them to pick it up.

From cookies and curries to colourful soaps and all sorts of accessories, Vatnsdal will launch his website this week to help support small businesses from small communities.

Deliveries kick off April 15, using a decommissioned ambulance that he’s repurposed. Around 60 vendors have already signed up with their products.

“Right now, I’m not taking any profit on this,” he said. “For me, this is just a way to help those that are struggling when I’m not doing my day job.”

Deliveries within the perimeter of Winnipeg will take place every Thursday night and Friday afternoon per week, if orders are placed by the preceding Wednesday.

After April 28, Vatnsdal’s delivery truck will begin to make rounds in rural areas, where he will set up mobile shops for about four hours at a time, with locations to be communicated in advance.

He’s created four different zones for delivery, aptly named in the theme of road-trip adventures:

 

• Gimli Glide: Lockport, Selkirk, Clandeboye, Petersfield, Matlock, Dunnottar, Ponemah, Winnipeg Beach, Sandy Hook, Gimli.
• Victoria Beach Venture: Lockport, Selkirk, Gull Lake, Beaconia, Grand Marais, Grand Beach, Lester Beach, Belair, Hillside Beach, Victoria Beach.
• West Hawk Waggle: Falcon Lake, West Hawk Lake, Rennie, Whitemouth, Seven Sisters, Beausejour, Garson, Birds Hill.
• Steinbach Shuffle: Grande Pointe, Ile-des-Chenes, Niverville, Mitchell, Steinbach, Blumenort, St. Anne, Dufresne, Lorette.

 

“There’s definitely an appetite for this,” said Vatnsdal. “I mean, I’m myself someone who wants to do his part in supporting businesses. So, I’m hoping more people want to support this kind of thing.

“At the end of the day, I strongly believe that the only way to get outside this pandemic with our local business community still sticking around is by doing our part and shopping at their stores first before we go out to those other big stores.”

 

Temur.Durrani@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @temurdur