Trinity Meat and Food Place invests in expansion

A Brandon food business has expanded its storage capacity to increase product availability, reduce transportation costs and improve its ability to serve customers in Westman.

Trinity Meat and Food Place has expanded its operations with a new walk-in freezer and increased dry storage capacity, allowing the business to bring more frozen and packaged food products to Brandon.

The expansion, which cost well over $50,000, was necessary to make the business more competitive and reduce the expenses associated with transporting goods from Winnipeg, co-owner Toye Olaoshebikan said.

The business, which has operated at its 10th Street location since August 2022, previously relied heavily on freezer storage facilities in Winnipeg because of limited storage capacity in Brandon.

“Brandon is considered a rural area. Most transportation companies from all over Canada would end at Winnipeg and we have to find another means of transportation all the way from Winnipeg to Brandon, and it’s usually costing us much,” he told the Sun.

To manage those costs and maintain affordable prices, Trinity had to increase the volume of goods it purchased at a time, he said.

“Instead of taking one pallet and paying, for example, $600, we can take three pallets. An equivalent for one pallet becomes maybe like $450, thereabouts,” Olaoshebikan said.

The additional storage capacity allows the business to purchase larger quantities, spread transportation costs across more products and reduce its reliance on rented freezer space in Winnipeg, he said.

The expansion, he said, involved converting an existing storage area into a walk-in freezer, while also increasing the business’s dry storage capacity.

“We took our goods out through the storage place, expanded the dry storage, and then did the walk-in freezer in the form of storage place,” he said.

The freezer alone cost more than $40,000, including the work required to prepare the space and install the necessary electrical connections. The overall project, including demolition and electrical work, exceeded $50,000, he said.

One of the immediate benefits is the ability to stock more products that were previously difficult to keep in Brandon, particularly during periods of supply shortages, co-owner Olapeju Osoneye said in an interview.

Olaosebikan pointed to turkey as an example, noting that the additional freezer capacity has improved the business’s ability to purchase and store the product whenever supplies become available.

“There’s a scarcity of turkey in the entire Canada, but the storage space helps us negotiate whenever there’s a little break-in and availability of this scarcity, and we bring more of it when we are able to have a freezer storage for them,” he said.

Olaoshebikan added that Trinity was the only business with turkey available in the Brandon at one point last month.

He attributed the shortage partly to producers and exporters working to meet export quotas.

Osoneye said the expansion would also improve the shopping experience by reducing situations in which customers are told certain products are unavailable or must wait for supplies to arrive from outside Brandon.

“Having the second working freezer would make us have more items available here in Brandon, so we don’t have to actually travel to the warehouses that we have,” she said.

She said having more products readily available could also encourage customers to return because they would know they could find what they needed when they visited the store.

“If we have the products here, it kind of increases the number of people that would come back. They know that we have it, so they would keep coming because they know, whenever they come here, they would get the items.”

Despite the investment, Olaoshebikan said storage remains a major challenge for the business and other food retailers in Brandon.

He said there are no commercial facilities in the city where businesses can rent freezer storage by the pallet, forcing Trinity to continue paying for space in Winnipeg.

“We have over 20 pallets of products in Winnipeg storage as I speak, and we are paying so much every month,” she said.

The new freezer can accommodate approximately seven to eight pallets, but the business still has more than 11 pallets stored in Winnipeg, with transportation costs adding to its monthly expenses.

Looking ahead, the co-owners have another major expansion in mind.

“We are establishing a bulk food centre where customers can purchase frozen products, meat and other groceries in larger quantities, rather than through conventional retail shopping,” Olaosebikan said.

“Everybody coming into that location is coming to buy bulk items, not retail.”

The proposed facility would require substantially more storage for frozen and dry goods and would likely operate from a different location because the current premises could not accommodate the project, he said.

The business is considering possible locations but has not identified a specific site. Olaoshebikan said the next phase could take place within the next year to 18 months.

He also said Trinity had sought support through the downtown development program for its latest expansion but was unable to secure funding because of budget limitations this year.

“They’ve been supportive in the past. But this time around, they just didn’t have the budget to come through for us,” she said.

Olaoshebikan said the business would continue looking for opportunities to access support as it works towards its longer-term expansion plans.

» aodutola@brandonsun.com

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