How Arctic Fresh is Tackling Food Insecurity in Canada’s North

There are findings that report First Nations, Inuit, and Métis adults across the North have five to six times higher levels of food insecurity than the Canadian average. Nearly 70 percent of Nunavut residents live in a state of food insecurity. Similar rates have been documented in northern Ontario, while more than 60 percent of on-reserve Indigenous households in Northern Manitoba are food insecure. 

Food prices can be two to three times higher in Nunavut than in southern Canada. With a long supply chain, often times running from Toronto to Winnipeg to Igloolik, and then to other communities, items not only have a decreased shelf life — they also increase price at every change of hand. Once in-store, items continue to acquire cost. Recently, members of northern communities are searching for ways to obtain and allocate grocery goods – and one solution is online shopping. 

Recently, Amazon has notably (and controversially) begun to further integrate technology into the grocery shopping experience. The company’s takeover of Whole Foods in 2017 was the first signal for big things to come. Amazon followed the move with Amazon Go in Seattle, a check-out free store, and more recently, announced its grocery delivery system AmazonFresh. These moves within the tech-powered grocery world are positioned to drastically change the shopping experience, as well as jockey for position within the $800 billion US grocery market online. 

For Arctic Fresh founders Rhoda Angutimarik and her partner, Merlyn Recinos, technology in grocery delivery represents a new kind of opportunity – one driven not solely by profit, but by the social good. Taking cues from the growing online grocery market, the Inuit-owned, Igloolik-based company is working to deliver fresh, affordable goods to 13 under-served northern communities. Launched in 2017, Arctic Fresh recently received the Social Enterprise Award from Startup Canada for its innovative technology and services. 

“Our goal is to expand into all of the regions that are overlooked by big suppliers,” explains Recinos, Vice President of Northern Operations. “We talk about Amazon and Walmart, and a lot of these places are overlooked [by big companies] — so the communities are left with very little choice.”

Searching for a more effective solution, Angutimarik and Recinos began exploring how an online grocery portal could reduce the cost of products. “We launched a self-made website, and it honestly looked like a 1980s website — very old school,” Recinos laughs. “We created it ourselves, and we put the product in there. At that time we had found a couple of suppliers that were willing to sell to us, but it wasn’t major.” 

After soft-launching, they realized that accreditation from Nutrition North Canada (NNC) was essential to being able to serve the communities. “We spent about a year applying for the NNC account,” he says. “We met with them multiple times about what reporting they needed, how we were going to do that reporting, how we were going to be accountable because its public money so our reporting on how we utilize subsidies and pass subsidies onto the customer was very important.” 

From here, Angutimarik and Recinos realized that what they were looking to launch wasn’t necessarily a straight-forward business, but rather a more responsive community service. “This is where we realized that what we were trying to do was a social enterprise,” Recinos says. “We were not in it to make money, we were in it to give people another option — to give people access to fresh and affordable products. So we changed our business idea and we took the social enterprise to heart. We are going to fight for food security, and if this works, we will utilize this tool [to also] build capacity and empower individuals in the north.” 

Today, Arctic Fresh is subsidized by NNC, has acquired its own warehouse and inventory, and a website powered by Shopify. It takes a minimum order of $50 (down from the company’s initial $150 minimum order) to have groceries delivered to communities in just two to four days (shipping included), with many items priced the same as in southern Canada. 

In addition to providing affordable to goods, Recinos also identifies education as a pillar of Arctic Fresh’s platform. “[Access] to internet for Nunavut was challenging,” Recinos says. “Recently, there was an investment from the Government of Canada to upgrade and set up systems [for access to] internet networks. This is going to allow us to educate people on healthy and nutritious foods, like [providing] recipes.” 

Arctic Fresh posts recipes on social media that promote not only nutritious store-bought food, but also locally-harvested goods. Recipes showcase ways to reduce food costs, such as stuffed local trout or char, or bannock and locally foraged berries.

With increasing demand, Arctic Fresh has its eyes on expansion with brick-and-mortar options. “There is a need for the online, but we also realize that there is a need for a better type of store locally,” Recinos says. “We’re developing a self-contained store made of containers. One container is for vegetables, and one container is a meat shop that is going to be able to process local harvest, with tables, sinks, and the equipment to process and freeze [the meat].” 

Food insecurity remains a looming threat to many northern families. Innovative, technology-based, community-led solutions such as Arctic Fresh are working to create opportunities, and impact is being felt. As Recinos recalls, “We had a social media post where someone said that what they were saving on their monthly bill was enough for them to be able to put their kids through college, which is just phenomenal.” 

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