Oliver & Bonacini, the restaurant group behind beloved Toronto restaurants like Auberge du Pommier and Canoe, is teaming up with Voilà by Sobeys to bring a gourmet experience to grocery home delivery.
Voilà already features items from Safeway, Farm Boy and Well.ca in addition to Sobeys’ own products. It’s now set to add some of O&B’s most popular dishes to its delivery line-up, with the help of Farm Boy’s test kitchen chefs.
Starting this week, you can add Maison Selby’s French onion soup, Leña’s piri piri chicken, Bannock’s tourtiere or O&B’s staple artisan chicken pot pie to your regular grocery order. The piri piri chicken for two ($26) includes both white meat and dark meat served with kale and roasted potatoes, while the family size tourtiere ($30) is filled with a blend of spiced braised pork shoulder, ground pork and ground beef.
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While the selection is currently limited to these four items, offerings are expected to expand as the Voilà by Sobeys, Farm Boy and O&B teams continue to experiment with maintaining the quality and flavour of classic O&B dishes when delivered in pre-cooked and frozen form.
With various O&B restaurants specializing in cuisines ranging from French and Mediterranean to Italian and South American, we can likely expect a diverse assortment of delicious new options in the months to come.
O&B launched its own grocery delivery service in April 2020. This new partnership with Voilà appears to build on the brand’s successful pandemic pivot. As restaurants continue to suffer and online grocery booms across the GTA, O&B has found a way to marry their upscale restaurant expertise to the realities of dining at home during coronavirus.
Jeff York, partner and special advisor to Sobeys and Farm Boy, sees this partnership as filling one of the many voids created by COVID-19 as well as a welcome opportunity for expansion and creativity.
“Customers and communities have sorely missed the in-dining restaurant experience through this seemingly never-ending cycle of lockdowns in the GTA,” he said in a press release. “The entire food industry must rally behind restaurants to create fertile ground for their continued innovation.”