Kyle’s NoFrills® Kitimat is a locally owned and operated discount grocery store located in the heart of Kitimat, BC. Kyle and his wife live own and operate the store, and they live in Kitimat. No Frills® is part of the Loblaws group, with 250+ franchise locations across Canada. No Frills® sells fresh produce, meat, President’s Choice®, and no name® products. No Frills® focuses on great meat and produce, a commitment to community and trusted low prices.
Question: How are you supporting other local businesses?
Answer: We buy local whenever we can, and are encouraged to buy BC and Canadian products by Loblaws. We buy as much as we can from Canadian businesses and sell BC-grown products when they are available in season. From summer to thanksgiving we have the “We Know Local” campaign that promotes local produce like potatoes, peppers, corn, strawberries, peaches, apples, and lettuce. We also buy eggs from Daybreak Farms, a small farm in Terrace, and Peace River region grass-fed bison from the Bison Guy. We are one of the few places where people can buy his products regularly. If we can buy Canadian products, that’s the next best thing, since we are supporting the local Canadian economy, and there’s no shipping and no importing involved. We have hundreds of Canadian products in the store, like Canadian canola oil and Dare crackers. We sell other Canadian made products, like toilet paper and cleaning products.
We also use local suppliers whenever we can. We do digital advertising at the Terrace airport. We purchase from Pyramid Office Supplies, we hire local people to do our window cleaning, our yard management, our electrical and plumbing. Our refrigeration contractor is based in Terrace.
Question: What social and environmental practices are you proud of?
Answer: We were one of the first stores to eliminate plastic bags. We use reusable bags – we have pretty much always done that. We are committed to reducing waste and have almost zero percent food waste. We have a hierarchy to make sure we can avoid landfills for unsold food – first humans, then animals, then compost, and the last resort is landfill. We use the Flash Foods App to sell food that is reaching its best-before date, and donate anything left over to farmers to feed dogs, pigs, ducks and chickens. After that, we compost everything we can, and any small amount that remains goes to landfill. For packaging materials, we recycle all the plastic wrap that comes in, and all the cardboard gets recycled.
We pride ourselves on being a great place to work, and are committed to being an inclusive employer. We have dedicated full-time employees and we hire a lot of high school kids. For many of them, this is their first job. We provide benefits for our full-time employees and our part-timers who meet the minimum number of hours. We develop our employees by promoting from within and posting internally first. We try to keep morale high by regularly buying our staff coffee and doughnuts and organising BBQs, holiday parties, etc.
We support hundreds of local community events. We do a big Christmas holiday fundraiser every year for the Kitimat Food Bank. Last year we raised more than $20K! We just raised $3K for the Kitimat Humane Society, sponsored the fishing derby, and handed out 2000 in bananas at the Canada Day parade. Those are the bigger things we do, but there are also a lot of little donations we make of between $50 and $200. We support so many school & community fundraisers – there are at least 50 per year!
We participate in the RCMP’s Safe Place for LGBTQ2S+ campaign by having a dedicated lunch room for anyone who needs a safe space from harassment. We’ve also supported the Pride Prom in the past.
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