Summary

Discover how Inno-3B helped Avril Supermarché Santé achieve its goal of starting an in-house production of microgreens through vertical farming. The combined effort positions the supermarket as a pioneer in the food retail industry by introducing this new sustainable business model. The project is now drawing a lot of attention from customers and competitors alike, and this is just the start.

In a nutshell:

Reduced carbon footprint through a pesticides-free in-store production
Reduced wasted through extremely short time to market
Maximized freshness and better taste quality of products
Sustainable business model that is both environmentally friendly and profitable
Enhanced customer experience

The Challenge

Implement an automated vertical farming closed-environment solution to an existing Avril Supermarché Santé location and put in place the complete production process from seed supply to harvesting and packaging.

About Avril

Avril Supermarché Santé is an independent owned health food store chain based in Quebec that thrives on sustainability and eco-friendly products. They adopted energy efficient building design for each of their 8 stores and are managing more than 700 different natural and certified organic food products, supplements, cosmetics as well as fair trade, ecological and local products suppliers. The retailer also operates a high-quality restaurant service, the Avril Bistro, at each location.

The Objectives

Enable year-round in-house certified organic microgreens production.
Introduce CultiGo: a game-changing integrated platform allowing food retailers to harness to power of ur vertical farming technology.
Decrease carbon footprint, greenhouse emissions, and waste through innovative technology.
Help retailer produce higher-quality, fresh organic products for end-customers.

How we helped

While Avril Supermarché Santé was aiming to get the lead on the competition in the food retail industry by producing their own greens, we were developing the most efficient vertical farming offer in terms of scalability, culture optimization and ROI. That was a perfect match.

The integration of our automated vertical farming towers in their store has not only enabled an on-premise year-round production of microgreens but has also helped Avril Supermarché Santé take a step further towards sustainability. In addition to the towers, fully-grown vegetables are grown in a full-window indoor garden which customer can see from inside the store.

This bold move decidedly puts Avril Supermarché Santé in the innovative category, and isn’t innovation key to futureproofing in any industry?

Results

The operation taking place at the store located in Laval is now producing enough microgreens to supply all eight stores in both shelf products and ingredients for the bistros, which reduces their carbon footprint and improves the product quality while still generating profits.

“Since we put our own microgreens on the shelves, we noticed a 20-25% increase [in sales] in that product category alone.”
- SYLVIE SENAY, Co-founder and co-owner, AVRIL SUPERMACHÉ SANTÉ

It also greatly improved the customer’s experience by proposing a responsible approach in delivering fresh, locally grown, pesticides-free microgreens with full traceability, addressing issues around the lack of this standard in the Canadian food industry.

“It improves our customer experiences. But what impacts the most is the food traceability.”
- ROLLAND TANGUAY, Co-founder and Co-owner, AVRIL SUPERMACHÉ SANTÉ

Future Plans

The success of the project so far confirms the ongoing partnership between Avril Supermarché Santé and Inno-3B in the months to come, as we continue to improve the science and engineering behind the technology. The plan is for the operation to keep evolving through simplified culture methods, smarter system tooling and overall better indoor farming knowledge.