Vancouver-based PlantX, an e-commerce site for plant-based groceries, recently announced its expansion into the US and Israel as well as new brick-and-mortar locations. I had the opportunity to speak this week with Sean Dollinger and Alex Hoffman, the co-founders of PlantX, to discuss the details of the company’s expansion news.
PlantX launched this year and has been operating its e-commerce site in Canada, and now the service is expanding to sell groceries to consumers in the United States and Israel. To accommodate these new channels, the company will be opening brick-and-mortar stores that will serve as shipment fulfillment centers. The US location will be based in San Diego, California, while the Israel location is currently undisclosed.
Hoffman emphasized that the stores will be much more than a grocery store or fulfillment center though; their primary focus will be to provide a learning center that educates consumers on a plant-based diet. The physical location will also include onsite kitchens for meal delivery service and a coffee shop serving plant-based items. To encourage the continued use of its e-commerce site, PlantX customers can actually go shop in these physical locations and can use their phones to scan QR codes and have the groceries delivered to their house.
The demand for purchasing groceries online has certainly soared during the pandemic; online grocery shopping hit a record of $7.2 billion in sales over the summer. PlantX is among a number of smaller e-commerce sites for plant-based only products like GFTO it’s Vegan, Billion Vegans, and Vegan Essentials; however, none of these companies offer physical locations that customers can visit.
Dollinger said that it is the company’s goal to have a brick-and-mortar location in every country, enabling consumers to use the e-commerce site throughout the world. In addition to the main flagship locations in each country, PlantX will be opening smaller franchise locations that will serve as grocery stores, fulfillment centers, and learning centers sometime in the future.
