New Smokey Hill Grocery competes with Northern Store in Waskaganish

Crees routinely spend a day driving to and from places like Matagami, Amos and Val-d’Or for a better choice of groceries than those available in their hometowns. In most communities, the biggest grocery retailer is the Northern Store, owned by the Winnipeg-based North West Company.

In Waskaganish, however, there’s a new grocery alternative: the Smokey Hill Grocery, which opened May 19.

“We don’t really compete with Northern – we don’t look at their prices,” said CEO Denys Boulanger. “We just do our business as fair as possible with the people in Waskaganish, so we have prices like you’d see in Montreal or Mont-Laurier, plus a surcharge for transport.”

The store is operated by the band council’s Waskaganish Business Corporation.

The idea of a band-owned grocery store emerged “because the people from Waskaganish were not very happy with the variety and quality, the choices and pricing,” said Boulanger. “[The Northern Store] was mostly alone around here, for about four years. Plus, Waskaganish wanted to create some jobs and keep profits in the community.”

The store is not a co-op, but Boulanger says that’s the plan for its future. For the moment, it’s looking simply to get on its feet as a key supplier of a wide variety of food products to the community of more than 2000 people.

“You’re going to see much of what you can get in Amos, Matagami or Val-d’Or at any IGA or Metro,” Boulanger said. “We have over 5000 different products – the variety is quite huge for the size of the population we have. We want to ensure that the variety helps improve the quality of life of the people around here. This means you don’t have to go to Val-d’Or or Matagami to buy the products you’re looking for. Plus, if they want something we don’t have, we can probably get it in the next week.”

In addition to groceries, the store has a take-out counter serving such favourites as fried and barbeque chicken, and ribs.

“So far it is extremely popular!” Boulanger noted.

But beyond the food, Boulanger suspects it will be the business model that draws people from the community to the store. Smokey Hill Grocery is able to provide “extremely competitive” pricing because it is not a private company with shareholders who want to see ever-increasing profits, he said.

“Of course, we want to deliver profits or we’d go bankrupt!” he laughed. “But we don’t want to make huge profits. And if we make a nice profit because the sales are good, we’ll probably lower the price.”

And that, according to Boulanger, is the bottom line. “The more they come to Smokey Hill Grocery, the more business we do, the more profit we make, and the more we lower the prices.”

Boulanger is originally from l’Assomption, a town east of Montreal. He was hired for his experience managing food-service operations all over Quebec.

“I’m a passionate guy about the food business, and about service,” he said. “We treat the client like our guest, which we hope means people who come to Smokey Hill Grocery will be very satisfied.”

When the Nation spoke with Boulanger, the store had been open under two weeks. Boulanger said already he felt he was seeing indications of success.

“So far, we’re extremely happy,” he said. “From what I hear, people in the community are very happy too. We’ve just opened, but we want to get more involved in the community – we want to be part of the community.”