The Food Issue
2015
Grains
West
28
success would be predicated upon quality and value. “We
had a better product and we could sell at a similar price to
everybody else, so why wouldn’t we do that?”
The family wasn’t flying blind. Glen, the youngest brother,
had just spent 14 months in Hong Kong working for
ParknShop, one of that market’s top grocers. The family put
his expertise to work conducting a business feasibility study.
Determining that a meat-only business wouldn’t work,
Sunterra launched in 1990, mirroring the one-stop shopping
of European markets. Sunterra market in Calgary’s Bankers
Hall opened that year and continues to serve customers 25
years later. Its structure was suggested by the Prices’ own
busy lives. “Who has time to cook?” posed Ray. “We went
into it thinking we needed to have prepared and ready-to-
cook meals.” Careful attention was also paid to store layout,
shelving and product presentation.
“We needed to get people into the store and tasting the
food,” said Ray. “We felt once they tasted it, they wouldn’t go
anywhere else.” Its high-quality alternatives to TV dinners and
better consumer experience proved a hit, with unexpectedly
high demand for sit-down restaurant service.
As the Sunterra chain has expanded, the evolution of its
goods and services has been based almost exclusively on
in-store consumer feedback. The subsequent tailoring of
this quality-plus-value equation has informed its penetration
of foreign export markets, notably the Japanese premium
grocery sector. Sunterra now also sells into China and Hong
Kong, where even a sliver of market share is highly lucrative.
Over coffee at the CrossIron Mills food court, Dave and son
Matt are on a short break between rural business meetings.
Not surprisingly, as a next-generation Price, Matt is a big fan
of producer self-determination. As Sunterra crop manager, he
also handles special projects.
He said the dissolution of the Canadian Wheat Board
monopoly has been entirely positive, allowing improvement
to the bottom line through hedging and forward selling as
well as marketing into the United States. “It just gives you a
lot more control. The Wheat Board was a pretty restrictive
system.”
Grain is but one Sunterra revenue stream. Though the bulk
of Alberta production is tied to the commodity system, the
integration and production of multiple high-quality products is
key for Sunterra’s success, said Dave. Selling to China wouldn’t
be possible without Sunterra’s ability to process its own raw
product. It can easily act on its own marketing insights while
maintaining the stability for growth.
As with new retail locations, the Prices have learned to
take measured steps into new export markets. “We look for
opportunities that, with focus and due diligence, we might do
a better job [with] than somebody reacting to opportunity as
opposed to planning for it,” said Dave.
The pendulum has swung towards the Sunterra model in the
greater grocery industry, he said. It was to be expected, he
added, but he believes Sunterra’s high-end market segment
remains secure because it’s a specialty, not a sideline.
Dave spoke fervently of bettering the agriculture sector,
and both father and son see vast new opportunities for Prairie
producers, notably in California. With a population equal in
size to Canada’s, its agricultural operations are shutting down
due to water shortage. There is opportunity for California-
bound dairy and poultry product exports and a subsequent
spinoff for local feed-grain production that Dave predicts will
grow in tandem.
“We can land product in California more cheaply than they
can out of the U.S. Midwest, which is the major production
centre for pork and beef,” he said. Gearing some of Alberta’s
crop and animal production for that market is an obvious
move, he added. “That’s the lowest-freight target market for
our meat products anywhere in North America, other than
close at home, because of the backhaul opportunity.” All it will
take, he advised, is federal and provincial government help to
eliminate American trade entanglements. “Just facilitate it, get
that stuff out of the way, and we will grow like mad.”
After all of Sunterra’s big-city success, Dave (left), Ray (right) and
the rest of the Price family remain intimately connected to the farm
and their agricultural roots.
