Here comes Craig’s + say hello to Uptown London BIA

Weekly Regional Business Intelligence

Written by Kieran Delamont, Associate Editor, London Inc.

Craig’s Cookies opens first London location

A hugely popular Toronto cookie café is coming to town. Craig’s Cookies is opening its first London franchise on Saturday at 615 Richmond Street. What is Craig’s Cookies? Only one of Toronto’s more popular treats, and part of a rapidly expanding cookie empire in Southwestern Ontario. The London franchise is being run by Parker Christie and Mohammed Khimini. “It’s finally happening,” Christie told The London Free Press earlier this summer, when the store was announced. “Craig’s Cookies for London will be great. All my friends and I discovered this brand in Toronto and loved it.” The store opens officially on Saturday morning.

The upshot: Craig’s Cookies is a business with a compelling story, in which owner Craig Pike started selling cookies, hand-delivered by bike, as a struggling actor looking to pay his phone bill. Within a couple short years, that has blossomed into a full-fledged franchise empire ― this summer it opened stores in Hamilton and Burlington, in addition to stores opened in Niagara Falls, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Collingwood and all around Toronto. Now, London joins the mix. The store is also well-loved within the LGBTQ community, and Pike has always made that part of the brand. “As a member of the queer community, I wanted Craig’s Cookies to offer a safe and inclusive place for 2SLGBTQIA+ employees and customers,” Pike wrote in Toronto Life last year. “I realized that I had a responsibility as a small-business owner to have Craig’s Cookies reflect what I wanted to see in other businesses.”

Read more: Toronto Life | Canadian Business

Hyde Park BIA seeks expansion and rebranding to ‘Uptown London BIA’

The Hyde Park BIA (HPBIA) is asking the city to approve a dramatic expansion of its geographical boundaries in a move that would extend its coverage area all the way north to Sunningdale Road, east to Wonderland Road and south to Oxford Street. The new “Uptown London” BIA would nearly double the number of businesses in its district, growing from around 400 businesses to over 700, including some big box retailers such as the Costco on Wonderland Road. “Overall, the feedback showed that a majority of businesses are open to the idea of a BIA in their area,” the HPBIA wrote in a submission to council’s planning committee. “These businesses face similar issues when it comes to growth, infrastructure challenges and opportunities. Given today’s economic challenges faced by local businesses, along with rapid growth in the northwest London area, we believe this is the right time for the Hyde Park BIA to expand our service boundaries while rebranding as the Uptown London BIA.”

The upshot: So far, the city seems open to letting the change go through, with the planning committee voting to have city staff complete a report on the request. “What I’ve heard from the parts of the boundary expansion that are within my current ward was a desire to have representation of a BIA,” Councillor Corrine Rahman, who sits on the HPBIA board, told The London Free Press. There was some concern expressed by Deputy Mayor Shawn Lewis (a member of the Argyle BIA board), who wondered whether bringing in a large number of corporate chains and franchises would be a smart move for the BIA. “I get a little concerned when some of the larger franchises get involved and either don’t participate, but complain a lot, or participate at such a rate that the mom-and-pops get drowned out,” he said. City staff will be looking at the idea in the near future with the proviso if more than a third of businesses are opposed the idea, it would recommend against the request.

Read more: City of London | London Free Press

Tahini’s unveils U.S. expansion plans

London-based Tahini’s Restaurants is expanding into the U.S., with stores planned in Chicago and New Jersey, founder and CEO Omar Hamam said. “We’re excited, very excited. The U.S. is a different beast,” he told The London Free Press. The restaurant has been a hit with consumers, even in shawarma-rich markets like the GTA. “What we have done is differentiated ourselves. We have traditional cuisine like shawarma, but we also have fusion,” said Haman, referring to items such as butter chicken, jerk chicken shawarma and shawarma poutine. The two U.S. locations have broken ground, Hamam said, but no opening date has been announced yet.

The upshot: Tahini’s has been one of the fastest growing franchises in the country and has plans to double its footprint in Canada next year, bringing it to 100 locations. The chain recently opened its 50th store in Edmonton, and has grown quickly since the pandemic ― growth that was in part aided by an unusual Bitcoin-based investment strategy that it pursued in 2020, which saw it plow 100 per cent of its cash reserves into crypto. And, it’s been killing it on social media. “Our social media is explosive,” Hamam recently told Retail Insider. “We have more YouTube and TikTok followers than almost any chain out there. We connect with the customers through our videos and our food. People want to see funny things, so we just try to be as funny as possible and we try to give consumers an emotional connection with the brand.”

Read more: London Free Press | Retail Insider

Sparking back up: Spirit River Indigenous cannabis trailer reopens after raid

Down, but not out: after being raided by the OPP in August, Spirit River has opened a new Indigenous cannabis shop in a new trailer, just a few metres away from the old trailer on Wellington Street (its storefront at 685 Richmond Street, which was also raided in August, remains closed). Same products, same prices, same quandary for police, who spend a decent amount of resources to raid and close Indigenous cannabis stores, just to see them open again. (“An investigation is currently ongoing, and we are not able to provide comment at this time,” is what an OPP spokesperson said on the matter.) The store’s jurisdictional claim remains the same: they argue that Canadian law doesn’t apply to Indigenous cannabis retailers, a thorny and complicated sovereignty claim that may or may not ever be fully resolved by the courts. For now, the trailer remains open ― at least until the next raid.

The upshot: Putting legal questions aside, one interesting thread here is there appears to be some fractures within the Spirit River company itself. Maurice French, the founder of the Spirit River chain and a large figure within the so-called “Red Market” Indigenous cannabis industry (which has a much more mature and robust supply chain than most give it credit for ― and which the somewhat shoddy nature of the stores would suggest), appears to have split off from the London stores, and has criticisms aimed at the operators. “I wanted no part of what was going on because we got away from what our original goal was,” he told the Free Press back in September. “Our plan was for treaty rights and exercising our treaty rights, and we got away from that with money and greed.”