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Taste of Home — New
Kim’s family owns a Jamaican Grocery Store in Edmonton
Taste of Home
New Jamaican grocery store in South Edmonton offers shoppers a taste of home.
Entering Eat Jamaican you can’t help but be drawn in by the beautiful mural on the wall, capturing the culture of Jamaica, you’re then greeted with a ‘Wha gwan’ (What’s up), while soft reggae music plays in the background. We want to make sure you feel as though you landed at the airport in Montego Bay, Jamaica said Kim-Ann Wilson, Co-owner/Marketing Director.
Eat Jamaican grocery store is the first Jamaican grocery store to open on the South Side of Edmonton since the 1970’s.Eat Jamaican supplies and delivers fresh Jamaican produce, wellknown food delicacies of Jamaica, spices, in-season fruits and vegetables to the Edmonton community. Eat Jamaican was birthed because of the lack of representation for this niche community, foods that are currently available in stores are marked ‘Jamaican’ but in fact are sourced from neighbouring Islands or even South America.
After Kim-Ann Wilson and her family moved to the city in 2012, her mother, Olive Thompson struggled to find authentic Jamaican food in the city. More than 5,000 people in Edmonton have Jamaican heritage, according to Statistics Canada. The Canadian Encyclopedia says Edmonton has one of the largest concentrations of Jamaican immigrants in Canada.
Eat Jamaican is the only store in Edmonton to carry some of Jamaica’s well loved foods and snacks, like CranWATA (cranberry water), Kiss Cupcakes, Tiki, Catch; not to mention the fruits and vegetables like Jamaican yellow yams, sweet potato, avocado, breadfruit, callaloo, fresh sorrel, plantain and seasonings.
Everything is sourced from farmers in Jamaica. Because of the authenticity of the products and foods that Eat Jamaican brings into Edmonton, restaurants around the city frequent the store, coming from as far as Red Deer, they are also seeing supply requests from as far as Yukon and Nova Scotia.
Eat Jamaican’s vision is to become the best provider of authentic Jamaican foods in Canada and we’re excited to announce that we’ll be opening a distribution centre in early 2022 to better meet the demand from restaurants, stores and other retail stores with authentic Jamaican foods across Canada.
