Martha Durdin - Creating a Vibrant Future for Canadian Women Entrepreneurs

Martha Durdin

Creating a Vibrant Future for Canadian Women Entrepreneurs

CanadianSME sat down with Martha Durdin, President and CEO of the Canadian Credit Union Association (CCUA), earlier this year to talk about the leadership techniques she applies when it comes to leading CCUA and what's her current take on the state of entrepreneurship in Canada. She also shared the kind of programs offered by CCUA for empowering and assisting women entrepreneurs and how she is working hard to create an even playing field. She also told us about the strategic ways taken by CCUA in promoting female entrepreneurs of today and tomorrow, along with some beautiful pieces of advice to the companies supporting and empowering women-led small and midsized businesses across Canada. Together, we explore Martha's role in empowering and backing women entrepreneurs of today and tomorrow.

Martha Durdin is currently the President and CEO at the Canadian Credit Union Association (CCUA).

She is a seasoned executive with extensive experience in management, public affairs and advocacy. Previously, she was the Managing Principal of a leading national strategic public affairs firm and spent thirteen years as an executive at a large Canadian bank. Early in her career, Martha worked on Parliament Hill.

Martha volunteers her time for a number of community organizations. Among them, she served three terms as the Chair of the Ontario Arts Council and is the immediate past Chair of the Royal Ontario Museum Board of Trustees. She is also a Director of The Canadian Club of Toronto.

Martha represents CCUA on the boards of The World Council of Credit Unions (WOCCU) and Co-operatives & Mutuals Canada (CMC) and a member on the National Steering Committee for Financial Literacy. Martha is a recipient of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal. President and CEO, Canadian Credit Union Association

Ms. Durdin is bilingual; holds a BA (Hon) from Western University, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and an ICD.D from the Institute of Corporate Directors at the Rotman School of Management.

What are your thoughts on the current state of entrepreneurship in Canada? Why do you think it is important to support young businesses?

Entrepreneurship is more important now than ever. If we want to grow the Canadian economy, we need to support and create more opportunities for new businesses and entrepreneurs. With the rising number of millennials embarking on entrepreneurial pursuits, and the growing need for capital to finance their ventures, we need to support the future leaders of tomorrow. As of 2021, Canada ’ s credit unions have supported over 374,363 small businesses. For example, in Ontario, the Libro Prosperity Fund focuses on increasing employment and improving the financial capacity and resilience of people, businesses, and organizations. Young entrepreneurs may do business differently than the generations before them, but the passion that drives them is universal and we need to support that.

Credit unions are supporting female entrepreneurs, where only 2.3% of them were granted venture capital funding in 2020. Can you please share your views in this regard?

Today, women are building innovative companies across a variety of sectors. However, while financial institutions have communicated their commitment to opening doors for female entrepreneurs and fostering inclusivity, we need the dollars to be put to work. Credit unions look at a person ’ s or company ’ s whole financial picture, not just current circumstances, which can help secure the financing entrepreneurs need. Credit unions can also offer greater flexibility, which can lead to quicker and more personalized loan decision-making. What do you have to say about the set of programs that the Canadian Credit Union offers such as Cultivator and Conexus Venture Capital Inc., CCUA’ s National Mentorship Program, Micro-Lending Program and Unity Women Entrepreneurs Program for empowering and supporting women?

Advocating for women in business is a critical part of our cooperative values. By providing programs that support women, we can help them overcome systemic barriers and increase the representation of female voices both in and out of the boardroom. Ultimately, it’ s important to offer programs that empower and support the advancement of women to ensure we continue to work towards creating an even playing field for all.

What are the strategic ways through which credit unions can use to support and empower female entrepreneurs?

Credit unions support and empower female entrepreneurs through unique initiatives which cater to the specific communities they represent. Since its inception in 2019, Cultivator and Conexus Venture Capital Inc. have supported 29 female-founded start-ups, and Conexus Venture Capital has invested in six companies with a female founder. Another example is the CCUA' s National Mentorship Program, a program that offers a women-focused stream to provide female employees and directors with additional support from industry leaders to take that next step in their professional careers. Cape Breton Credit Union and Sydney Credit Union offer Micro-Lending programs to help female entrepreneurs fund their business ventures. In Vancouver, there is the Unity Women Entrepreneurs Program by Vancity credit union, which offers loans to support women entrepreneurs.

What is your advice to the companies willing to empower and support female-owned small and medium businesses?

From running their households to a successful business, women can do it all. While great strides have been made to support the strategic business ambitions of women, there is more work to do. For female entrepreneurs, lack of access to information and financing options has made the road to success a tough one. I would encourage companies to offer more funding and training opportunities targeted at women to help them gain the confidence and resources to take their businesses to the next level.

CEO & Founder of OneLocal

CanadianSME sat down with Edward Yao, founder and CEO of OneLocal, to talk about his inspiration and motivation behind launching OneLocal as well as the prime goal that he wants to accomplish through his work. He also shared some of his thoughts regarding online reviews in building awareness of small businesses as well as their impact on driving trust and reliability. He also talked about the strategies that can be executed when it comes to digital marketing and the power of social media and email in reaching customers. Also, he discusses the role of online advertisements in the digital marketing of small businesses. Finally, he shared some of the strategies and ways entrepreneurs can drive brand awareness for their companies and set themselves for success. Together, we explore Edward' s role in driving digital success for SMEs across Canada.

Edward Yao is the founder and CEO of OneLocal. With a background in management consulting, he has already successfully built Canada ' s first daily deals company, Teambuy, growing and scaling it to >$50M GMV and 130+ employees in under five years. A local marketing expert and thought leader, his career is focused on delivering measurable results, revenue growth and customer loyalty for businesses of all sizes. Eddy lives in Toronto with his wife Jessica and their dog Bolt.

Edward Yao

Harnessing the Power of Technology to Deliver Positive Results

What was the motivation and inspiration behind starting "OneLocal" , what are you hoping to achieve through the work that you do?

Small businesses are an incredibly underserved market which is surprising, considering they represent nearly 99% of all businesses in the United States and Canada. In addition, small business owners typically cover at least three to five additional operational roles within their companies (bookkeeper, salesperson, marketer etc.) The result? Most small businesses lack the time, resources and expertise to adequately manage their marketing which is resulting in performance gaps and a failure to drive actual business results.

At OneLocal, we solve this in a few ways: first, through our suite of local marketing tools, which are explicitly designed to drive SME success and second, by backing up our tech with a real-life marketing expert to help guide our customers and optimize their success.

Historically, SMEs have either marketed themselves directly or relied on agencies and publications to do it for them. Both scenarios are far from perfect. The first lacks expertise, results and time, while agency billables and media costs can quickly run into the tens of thousands, making it cost-prohibitive. At OneLocal, we operate as a hybrid solution that relies on proprietary technology and procedures to deliver the same level of marketing expertise and success at much lower subscription prices.

What are your thoughts on the role of online reviews in creating awareness about small businesses? What kind of impact have online reviews had on your business?

Online reviews are a significant source of credibility and are essential to the local marketing stack. This value is ten-fold for SMEs that don

As one of the most important ranking factors for local SEO, generating more, better quality reviews provide the social proof buyers are after while earning recognition and better placement by search engines. We use reviews within our own business to create trust and authority while improving SEO.

What strategies do you think work best when it comes to digital marketing? Do you think that email and social media are still effective methods for reaching customers?

There is no one-size-fits-all marketing strategy and gone are the days when we could call any single channel a ' silver bullet' . With the average buyer requiring eight or more impressions to convert, multichannel or omnichannel strategies typically prove most fruitful.

Social media and email remain highly effective at driving the repeated engagement of buyers to need to convert. In a post-pandemic, paperless world, I believe we 'll continue to see these channels grow as they become more and more engrained in the overall customer experience post-sale, with dynamic data and AI automating much of the process for business owners.

What role does optimization of online ads play in the digital marketing of small businesses?

Optimization is an essential part of any marketing campaign, even more so for small businesses. Their budgets are often a fraction of those they are competing with at auction, so their campaigns must be run with a higher degree of efficiency to be successful. When it comes to online ads, optimization efforts are focussed on lowering customer click/CPC costs (improved headlines, ad copy and keywords) in line with improved landing page experiences that drive conversions while maximizing overall quality scores. Customers who self-manage ads before onboarding with OneLocal consistently see an immediate performance lift through optimization activities and the application of best practices.

What are your strategic plans for entrepreneurs to drive awareness for their companies and set themselves up for success?

We will continue to educate SMEs and entrepreneurs on the importance of taking a multichannel approach to their marketing. While each channel offers a chance at some marketing success, we see bigger wins when the systems are integrated and share data and unified management throughout the customer journey.

From the product side, we will continue to productize our procedures to give our customers more and more selfserve options, adding automation and AI to reduce the time and effort they spend on redundant marketing tasks, targeting and communication fulfillment.

About OneLocal

OneLocal is revolutionizing small business marketing. With a best-inclass suite of local marketing tools, supported by a team of real-life marketing experts, OneLocal provides technology-backed, managed marketing services that allow small business owners to focus on their passions and what they do best - running their businesses. Backed by Y Combinator, Nimble Ventures and Share Capital, OneLocal levels the playing field while driving tangible results for thousands of small businesses throughout North America, the United Kingdom and Australia. For more information or to see a demo, please visit www.onelocal.com.

Regional Vice President at Canada Protection Plan, a Foresters Financial Company

CanadianSME sat down with Chantal Mackenzie, the Regional Vice President at Canada Protection Plan, a Foresters Financial Company, to talk about the survey conducted by Canada Protection Plan revealing the gender gap in financial protection. She also told us how the global pandemic badly affected the financial conditions of female entrepreneurs when it comes to accomplishing their needs and goals. She also shared some of the challenges that she faced and how she learned from her past experiences. Finally, we talked about the role of financial literacy of a woman in shaping a successful business. Together, we explore Chantal' s role in bridging the gender gap in financial protection.

With over three decades of experience in the financial industry, Chantal Mackenzie is the Regional Vice President at Canada Protection Plan, a Foresters Financial Company for Alberta South, NWT/YT.

As Vice President, she focuses on transforming and coaching advisors and general managing agencies with their business growth plans. With an impressive record of success in developing winning growth strategies and building effective teams, Chantal has set strategic direction for brokers and distributors through Canada Protection Plan and Foresters Financial’ s product solutions and tools.

Over the course of her career, her experience in growing organizations has ranged from traditional to simplified issue insurance providers.

Chantal Mackenzie

Providing Cutting-Edge Solutions to Insurance Advisors in Helping Families and Communities

There was a recent analysis conducted by CPP on the past data revealing the gender gap in financial protection, can you highlight the keen insights of the analysis?

Each year around International Women

’ s Day, we see a renewed interest in discussions surrounding gender equality, but a lesser talked about component of equity is financial protection. Canada Protection Plan recently conducted an analysis of aggregate data (based on 500,000 transactions since 1960) and uncovered some interesting insights. Namely, the insurance gap between men and women has narrowed since the 1960s, with nearly 52% of women insured today compared to 48% of men. Compare this to the period between 1960 – 1980, which saw men at 62% and women at 38%.

Impressively, critical illness insurance data shows that women are further taking action at 60% ownership, compared to only 40% of men. While these trends indicate that women are increasingly taking control over their financial security, the average face value tends to be lower, which could be a reflection of the continued income gap.

The pandemic has affected the financial situations of women entrepreneurs which made them think about getting financial protection for meeting their goals and needs. What do you have to say about this?

I think the pandemic has been a major eye-opener for women when it comes to their financial protection, and we

’ ve seen a heightened focus on how to become more confident and better equipped to handle financial savings and investments. For female business owners, in particular, the threat of the pandemic, from both a personal and a professional perspective, has shaken up

traditional understandings of financial planning and driven a renewed interest in exploring the tools that are available to protect against uncertainty. Interest in life insurance has certainly experienced an uptick from entrepreneurs, many of whom have come to realize that such benefits are usually covered by employers. Becoming an entrepreneur is an impressive feat, but one that entails thinking about ways to protect yourself, your business and your family should something unexpected happen.

While the realization may have been borne out of the pandemic as a necessity, this ‘ rethink’ of financial wellbeing has been largely a positive one. We ’ re seeing more females motivated to take control over their finances, their businesses and most importantly, themselves. This committed and disciplined approach is about giving other female entrepreneurs a model to emulate and paving the way for others to follow.

By 2022, women are more likely to purchase insurance than men. What are your views about the gender gap becoming narrow with women being more aware of financial protection?

The narrowing of the insurance gap is a highly promising trend that reflects the increasing financial power held by women. Historically, we ’ ve seen men dominate the insurance space, as old-fashioned thinking led us to protect the people who were ‘ earning an income. That women are seeking out insurance at higher rates than men is a very welcome sign of two key realizations – an understanding of the immense value provided by home or family caregivers, and the incredible strides made by working women, from launching innovative businesses, to managing large amounts of wealth, to climbing the corporate ladder and becoming major economic players. The willingness of women to take responsibility and protect their financial assets is a hugely positive development and a hopeful sign for a female-positive future.

How does the financial literacy of women play a major role in small businesses?

Being a successful entrepreneur requires having solid investing and budgeting skills, two main aspects of financial literacy. Entrepreneurs are responsible to protect themselves, employees and loved ones against the unexpected, and many look to secure some peace of mind through insurance. When women set goals and expectations and act on them by obtaining the necessary protective measures, they can move forward with confidence knowing that their business and family will be cared for, no matter the circumstances. Entrepreneurs with life insurance can also enjoy certain tax benefits, such as funding transition plans, reducing tax on passive assets, having access to cash that their businesses can use if needed, and diversifying their portfolios. What did you learn from your failures? Were you able to overcome them?

I wouldn

’t call them failures but rather challenges. Despite tremendous advances from women, financial spaces are still predominantly male-oriented. As a female in the industry, I’ ve experienced plenty of bias over the years, predominantly from older men, and I’ ve struggled to find mentors whom I could really connect with. With over 30 years of experience, the challenges I’ ve encountered haven ’t stopped me – in fact, they ’ ve helped me develop a better understanding of industry shortcomings and connect with a critically important market that continues to demand more female representation.

What piece of advice would you like to give women-owned small businesses regarding the increasing need for financial literacy?

Focus on honing your saving, investing and budgeting skills – and start as early as possible. Developing an understanding of finance will allow you to ask the right questions and make better, more educated business decisions. I’d also recommend working with a financial advisor to help you navigate the extensive number of solutions available. Advisors can also help create a personalized plan that takes your specific needs and goals into consideration, so don ’t be afraid to ‘ shop around for the right one. Lastly, and I cannot emphasize this enough, not having risk protection in place is a risk in and of itself. Remember, while you cannot control the future, you can equip yourself to control the unexpected.

Desirée Bombenon

Revolutionized the Call Center Sector with Her PurposeOriented Strategy

CanadianSME sat down with Desirée A Bombenon, CEO and Chief Disruption Officer at SureCall, to talk about what motivated her to take the entrepreneurial journey. She also shared with us about EY's Entrepreneur of the Year Program in encouraging and empowering her career. We talked about her winning the RBC Momentum Award, what this win means to her, and how it impacted her entrepreneurship career. We also had a discussion regarding how Hero Girls is educating girls of unrepresented communities and providing them with financial literacy and entrepreneurial skills. She also shared some of her biggest failures and how she learned from them, and also the pros and cons of being a female entrepreneur. Together, we explore Desirée's role in building resilience during the hardest of times. Desirée A Bombenon is a serial entrepreneur and mentor. Born in Colombo Sri-Lanka, she immigrated to Canada at a young age with a dream to work hard and give back to her community. Balanced by her Husband Marc and her two children Janine and Joel, Desirée is passionate about making a difference. Desirée is a health enthusiast, enjoys wake boarding, snowboarding, hiking, tennis, writing, painting, drawing, reading, scuba diving and martial arts. Desirée enjoys community giving, philanthropy, and volunteer work. Outside her many business endeavors and community work, Desirée is a published fictional author. Desirée’s life goal is to create value by mentoring those who wish to improve themselves through business and social responsibility for a better community and world. Her work at Harvard created Hero Girls – a humanitarian project of educating women in developing countries to raise the prosperity of the entire community.

How did you start your business career? Can you please share your journey with our readers?

The journey really started out with taking business courses and getting an undergraduate in business. I loved the fact that anyone could start a business and build it up and there was strategy and goals and a whole structure around it. When I had the chance to step up and show people what I could do, as well as share my thoughts and ideas, it helped me to get into roles that would support me later as an entrepreneur. I had to work through several roles, from the front line to almost every position in the corporation I worked for to prove I was able to take on a leadership role. Quite often I was passed over for a male employee, who had much less tenure than I had. One of the most important things a budding entrepreneur or business leader can do is take chances, and when an opportunity presents itself, you have to take it. That proactiveness will serve you later as a foundation for confidence, but also as a lever to the next big thing. After several professional roles, I started a wine importing business, as well I became co-founder, and CEO of SureCall a global purpose-driven BPO, that has grown tremendously since 2013. I pivoted to social entrepreneurship as I had always had the goal of utilizing business as a force for good since I was very young, and before it became the popular thing for businesses to do. Today my company spends 2% of our top-line revenue, giving back to the local community, assisting in national endeavours, and contributing to global humanitarian causes.

' ve been involved in the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year program, both as a winner in the Prairies Region for the category of Communication Technology, and also as a judge. How has recognition like this impacted your career and would you encourage other successful entrepreneurs to nominate themselves?

It' s been a pleasure and honor receiving the EY recognitions and judging these incredible companies vying for entrepreneur of the year. I think it has brought awareness to many things, not just to me but to my business, which does a lot of community work. EY has of course added tremendous value to both my personal brand and the brand image of my businesses. We have seen an increase in interest from both new customers as well as a talent who want to come and work for us. I would definitely encourage entrepreneurs to nominate themselves or others whom they think can benefit from the program. Regardless of whether you win, there is significant value to the exercise of doing the submission. I realized our company had done so much and come so far, and I wasn ’t really using any of that information to market the company. I could show my team the fantastic progress we were making. The EY program opened my eyes to how much we should be celebrating as a company for the efforts we have made and the success we have had.

In 2020, you were awarded as the winner of the RBC Momentum Award, a category of the RBC Canadian Women Entrepreneur Awards that honors an entrepreneur who has created a responsive business that can adapt to changing market environments and leverage opportunities for continued growth. What does winning this award mean to you?

This award is meaningful for many reasons, one is that the women who are nominated for the awarded work hard and have had to fight through different challenges and obstacles than their male counterparts. But more important to me is that it sends a message to all the young girls and women out there that they can do and become whomever they want. That they can follow their dreams and passions and believe in their ability to make things happen. This award is a symbol of that. According to recent Salesforce data, it shows that 83% of Canadians want to support brands that prioritize values and profit equally. Can you share your thoughts on this with our readers?

This is evident in how many businesses are clearly shifting the way they do business and some of the corporate values that are changing in order to retain employees. My company is a certified B Corporation, meaning we are held to the highest standards of environmental, social, and ethical behaviors and processes. As more consumers want to ensure that their purchases are contributing to corporately responsible companies who value sustainable business practices you will see more and more companies change their own values and behaviors. This is wonderful of course, it means many things including how people are valued by the companies they work for, as well as thinking about community contributions, and sharing in environmental goals among other important humanitarian efforts.

You launched Hero Girls because of your passion to educate girls in underserved communities and provide them with financial literacy, entrepreneurial skills, etc. Please let us know about the challenges faced during this initiative and why you think it' s important to empower the underrepresented communities.

Let me start by saying when you empower girls in a community you raise the prosperity of the entire community. There are hundreds of research papers that speak to this, and it really doesn ’t matter how, as much as it matters why. Women have so much to contribute, not only in their creative and collaborative methodology when it comes to solving challenging problems, but they are generally the caregivers and nurturers, especially in developing countries. How you treat the females in a society is directly related to how that society will survive and succeed. For me, the challenge, especially in developing worlds, is to get the local community to support the efforts to educate females. In many of these regions, girls are treated no better than farm animals, and are used to barter, or sold off to work as labourers or worse. We had to go in and establish a relationship with village influencers on the ground and build trust, and ensure they understood the value that the program would bring to the village in order to be accepted. We also had to work hard to show results in the first year to encourage further collaboration that would allow us to continue the program. In the end, we had a successful 3-year pilot, putting over 500 girls through the empowerment and entrepreneurial Hero Girls program, which included scholarships, and an innovation project. We were also able to provide bicycles for safe transportation to school and supported the mother ’ s group with microloans to start businesses in the village. We are now moving the program to include assistance for women and girls being exploited and trafficked in these countries. What have you learned from your failures? Which of them are most meaningful?

I have learned that failures must happen if you want to reach your full potential. I have learned that titles don ’t matter, and that leadership is about empowering and supporting others. I have learned that it’ s important to make decisions even if it’ s the wrong decision, the status quo is not an option, and hope is not a strategy. I have learned that barriers and limitations are figments of my imagination. And I have learned that the less you think about money and profit, the more money and profit you make. Every failure is meaningful; someone asked me if I could go back and have a re-do which failure would I pick, I simply would not. I embrace these as learning opportunities and believe me, I learned a lot!

Are there any pros and cons of being a woman entrepreneur? What specific advice do you have for young women who are aspiring to become entrepreneurs in future?

There are both pros and cons, to being a woman entrepreneur, especially today. It’ s a highly regarded position to be a female entrepreneur, whether for the right or wrong reasons, the spotlight is on women today. There are still many challenges and underlying issues to deal with. Today if you are a woman in a leadership role you are under a microscope, and often seen as getting the role to make quota or as the “token ” female on the board. It’ s tough because we know female leaders and entrepreneurs are effective, and talented and deserve the right to be in the role. Other challenges are that female entrepreneur are still not looked at with the same degree of seriousness as male entrepreneurs, and in many cases are overlooked when it comes to funding opportunities or investment. I realize these things are changing, but not quickly enough. In the meantime, I encourage all entrepreneurs to never give up, it’ s these challenges that will build resilience to get you through the hardest times and give you the energy to succeed more than you could ever imagine.

KITCHEN HUB TAK K I I N T G C THE HEN CO TO N N CEP EW T H O EI F G GHO HTS! ST

The concept of a ghost kitchen has long been crawling around the culinary scene. The idea of Toronto ' s unique “Kitchen Hub” food hall concept, essentially a ghost kitchen that houses multiple catering partners, was born in Adam Armeland' s head one day while on maternity leave and counting the number of people buying food. Kitchen Hub claims to be “Canada ’ s first virtual food hall” . It offers restaurants and foodservice establishments dedicated turnkey kitchen spaces (colloquially referred to as " ghost kitchens ") to expand sales of the space, especially for takeout and delivery operations.

What Made Adam Armeland Open Kitchen Hub?

During parental leave, Adam always went to a place called Pazza Pazza in Eglington to buy food for his family. It was his way of ' cooking ' for the family when he was busy taking care of his daughter. He kept noticing and slapped his head like an anvil several times, and eventually, he woke up and noticed a group of drivers and parents just passing by him. People were gathering and driving. He noticed two people sitting on the floor and had to feel the constant traffic jams. And, suddenly an idea came to his mind. Adam realized that people are busy and looking for comfort and quality food. Toronto is famous for its amazing food and it is known all over the world since off-premises were on the rise at that time. DoorDash just arrived in Canada and UberEats has its place. All these things led to the birth of Canada ’ s first virtual food hall - Kitchen Hub.

Adam Armeland, Co-founder and CEO of Kitchen Hub, has an interest in logistics and plans to open more locations across the country, allowing brands to quickly and relatively inexpensively expand their presence in high-demand locations outside of shipping locations.

Overall Strategy of Kitchen Hub

Adam Armeland’ s Kitchen Hub’ s strategy is to make restaurants very successful in their space. He has collaborated with small and large restaurants such as Kanga, Fresh, and Pai and a dessert-only concept of the Cheesecake Factory. It also attracts more CPG products and other brands that want to sell directly to consumers, such as Greenhouse juice and frozen desserts like Magnum, Ben & Jerry, and Klondike. Kitchen Hub’ s CPG partners typically sign up for a minimum of one year, but restaurants sign up for a little longer, which is closer to a rental.

Kitchen Hub has two business models. One is 'instant

cooking

' , in which dishes are prepared according to a restaurant partner ' s recipes and ingredients. Kitchen Hub is confident in launching a virtual brand that either succeeds or can succeed. The other is a jumble of sold by and sold through. When a pint of Ben & Jerry ' s ice cream or Greenhouse juice runs out, Kitchen Hub is a fulfillment partner for brands to " put the pins back in place ” as if they are having a store of their own, but it’ s a virtual and digital store.

Future Plans of Adam Armeland

Adam Armeland has announced plans to launch five more food halls next year, with 50 stores expected to open across Canada over the next five years. This announcement comes after Kitchen Hub has raised an additional $9 million in funding for a total of $10 million to date. According to Kitchen Hub, investors in this round include Harlo Equity Partners, Proficio Capital Partners, QSR Group, PIK Investments, as well as existing entrepreneurs and investors.

There will be the flagship site with 13 kitchens and retail space among the food halls to open in 2022. According to Kitchen Hub, the virtual food hall model gives restaurant operators access to previously non-takeout restaurants in the surrounding area, while providing infrastructure and low overhead costs for restaurant operators. Kitchen Hub currently serves takeaways from Toronto-based restaurants like Pai and Piano Piano. To expand its presence, Kitchen Hub will use the funds as a first step toward opening more locations to support adding restaurant partners, grow existing partners, further develop skills and double the size of the team.

What Does Kitchen Hub Believe?

Matthew Wosk, CEO of Proficio Capital Partners, said the pandemic has driven tremendous innovation and growth in the takeaway market. Virtual food halls have become an integral part of North America. And because Kitchen Hub is an industry leader in Canada, he sees an opportunity to help them grow quickly.

Mat Abramsky, Co-Founder and CFO of Kitchen Hub believes that Kitchen Hub is a great way to bring community centers, industrial hubs and suburban offices to life. This new capital will allow them to work with more rental partners across Canada to expand their presence and cater to their neighbours.