This Montrealer wants to create the “Whole Foods of convenience stores”
The first KaleMart24 should open its doors this year in Montreal.
Self-service convenience stores, stocked with quality healthy and ready-to-eat products? This is the idea behind KaleMart24, the project of entrepreneur Sam Saoudi who aims to give birth to the “Whole Foods Market for convenience stores”, nothing less!
Indeed, after creating his brand of matcha drinks, Toro Matcha, Montreal entrepreneur Sam Saoudi set himself a much more ambitious challenge: to revolutionize local commerce by creating “convenience stores health”.
“Like many millennials, I am very busy, so often I go to the convenience store next to the office or on my way home and, unfortunately, I find that there are mostly synthetic products, junk food and prepared meals that are not very healthy,” he says. And that's where the idea for KaleMart24 came from.
By setting up his “reinvented convenience stores”, he thinks he is responding to a need, that of active millennials who live in dense urban areas, who care about their food and who want to have access to quality products 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. out of 7. The products offered in KaleMart24 will therefore be carefully selected by a dietitian.
From Montreal to the United States
If Sam Saoudi intends to conquer all of Canada with his concept, it is in Montreal that the first KaleMart24 should open its doors, starting in 2023. The entrepreneur even has the objective of opening five more. ;by the end of the year, split between Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. By 2025, he hopes to have no less than 30 health convenience stores in the country before tackling the American market.
In addition to offering healthy products and being open at all hours of the day and night, the Montreal branch KaleMart24 – whose address is unknown at this time – should also be equipped with automatic checkouts and an application allowing you to order and pay before going on site to speed up the shopping experience.
But while inflation is affecting a large part of the population, by wanting to revolutionize local commerce, does Sam Saoudi think he will succeed in guaranteeing prices comparable to those of current convenience stores?
“Some products may be more expensive, but not all of them will necessarily be. For example, Toro Matcha is not more expensive than Red Bull, he replies. My primary objective is really to change the image we have of the convenience store as a place where we buy junk food, cigarettes or alcohol. We want them to be convenience stores that offer something else.”
To carry out his project, the entrepreneur signed a contract with the firm Think Retail, which helps businesses develop their retail concept. Retail. He is currently still looking for investments and will launch a crowdfunding campaign on the Crowdfunder platform in the coming weeks.
