PlantX, an online plant-based retailer, has joined forces with iconic Canadian department store Hudson’s Bay Company to open a café and retail as part of the company’s plant-based expansion into the world of brick-and-mortar.
You can find PlantX’s XMarket Café concept in The Bay’s Ottawa CF Rideau Centre and its retail concept in Toronto’s Yorkdale Shopping Centre. The 100 per cent plant-based café concept features vegan beverages and plant-based food with ingredients and bakery items sourced from local Ottawa businesses.
XMarket shops have opened at both Yorkdale and Rideau, offering a curated selection of plant-based products spanning grocery, home, personal care, pets and more.
The physical stores are the brand’s way to transcend its digital presence, providing fans of the brand’s plant-based products a new way to experience PlantX while serving as a sort of education and distribution centre for the company.
“Having a retail presence in Hudson’s Bay’s locations offers incredible opportunities to exert our plant-based impact and build on our retail efforts,” Alex Hoffman, a representative for PlantX, told Post City Magazines. “XMarket speaks to a growing consumer segment and incorporates local partnerships that make this new experience special and unique to the community that the Hudson Bay Company has built over the years.”
Guided by their mission to simplify living healthy, PlantX was launched more than a year and a half ago, with a head office in Vancouver and is currently operating in Canada, the US, the UK, Germany and Israel.
This is just the first step for the young company that offers consumers access to more than 5,000 plant-based products. In such a short time the company has grown exponentially, expanding into meal and indoor plant deliveries, with plans underway to further expand into cosmetics, clothing and water and eventually open up more brick-and-mortar locations.
Hoffman adds, “PlantX is primarily focused on e-commerce…We are working on a franchise plan for all future locations, as we have accomplished building XMarket’s in all major hubs that support our e-commerce distribution.”
