Mission: To be a leader in specialty produce in Canada
Assets: 30 locations in B.C. and Ontario; approximately 18,000 customer visits a day
Yield: $60 million-plus in annual fruit and vegetable sales
By Noa Glouberman
The year was 1987. Queenie Chu, a Hong Kong native studying business at Simon Fraser University, needed a summer job. When she won a cashier post at a small Granville Island fruit- and-vegetable stand, she never dreamt it would lead her to the top of a produce empire boasting 30 locations and $60 million in annual sales.
“When I took the job I thought, ‘I eat produce all the time; this should be easy,” Chu, vice-president of Richmond-based Kin’s Farm Markets, said lightheartedly. “But it’s really amazing to think I got my start in the grocery business at an eight-foot-long table.”
Not just any table, she added, but the busiest one in the market.
“It wasn’t called Kin’s yet, but it was run by the same brothers – Kin Wah Leung, who’s now my husband, and Kin Hun Leung – with the same principles used to run the business today,” she said. “There was lots of competition in the market so they asked, ‘Why are we different?’ The answer is, ‘We sell freshness.’”
To ensure their freshness guarantee, the Leung brothers drove to the Fraser Valley each night, visiting farmers and picking the best produce to sell at their stand the next day.
“They’d load the van with local berries, apples, pears, corn, cauliflower – even green peppers and watermelons – and drive home to store everything in a cooler in the garage,” Chu said. “They finished at midnight and only had a few hours’ sleep before going back to work. But that’s how you stand out – by going the extra mile and always having the freshest produce.”
This basic business approach would set the tone for Kin’s staggering success over the next two decades. It also solidified Chu’s decision to quit school and join the Leungs when they opened their flagship store in Richmond’s Blundell Centre in the fall of ’87.
“I didn’t even know where Richmond was,” Chu said, “but I thought, sure, why not? I had a good relationship with the Leung family. They were good people, hard working, and I believed in their vision and values. That’s how Kin’s started growing, with five employees working together to offer the freshest produce.”
While the Leungs continued making their rounds to Surrey, Abbotsford – as far as Vernon – to forge relationships with growers (according to Chu, “we dealt with the fathers, now we’re doing business with the sons”), she turned her attention to the retail side of the business.
“I spent a lot of time observing my husband’s sister, who was very good with customers,” Chu said. “She remembered their names and what was happening in their lives. I realized this was going to be important.”
The combination of top-notch produce and outstanding service soon meant a spike in sales, and the Kins started ordering whole pallets of products – but never compromised on their commitment to freshness.
Even today, the company’s small, 14-000-foot warehouse is testament to how little time stock spends sitting between delivery and distribution.
“Our business is not to store product, it’s to sell it,” she explained. “We keep coolers in our stores very small, about 200 square feet, and we don’t display any produce in refrigerated cases like many grocers. We lay everything out on tables, which forces us as managers to look at the product and offer only the freshest things to customers. There’s no dependency on coolers.”
A low loss rate of about 5% – half the industry standard – proves Chu’s point that, in addition to freshness, proper presentation is paramount to success.
“For example, after we opened a second location in Ladner in 1990, we decided to introduce exotics like ‘jet-fresh’ Hawaiian pineapple and papaya to our stores. We put the logistics in place to get the fruit here fast and sell it fresh, but the problem was nobody knew papaya. We saw that we needed to educate customers by giving samples and explaining the nutritional value so they would buy it.”
These days, Chu puts her business knowledge to use beyond the service end, overseeing advertising and cultivating relationships with landlords like Guildford Town Centre general manager Peggy White.
“When Kin’s first opened it was a very new concept to offer produce in a mall,” said White. “Queenie was likely one of the first, but she’s very innovative and good at what she does.”
Though Chu was encouraged by various mall operators to add more products, like flowers and farm-fresh eggs, to Kin’s mix, she refused, trusting in her company’s ability to attract business based solely on the freshness of its produce.
“She stays very true to her fruits and vegetables,” White confirmed. “Kin’s is well-known for that, and it’s served Queenie well to stay so niched. Her numbers are fabulous and it’s likely because she’s committed to ensuring what she does sell is the best of its kind.”
“Sometimes customers still say, ‘If you had dressing for salads, tofu, this and that, I wouldn’t have to go across the street, I could do all my shopping here,’” Chu echoed. “But we already determined that what we’re good at is selling freshness, produce. So yes, it’s convenience for the customer, but we’re not experts at selling rice or other groceries.”
The same, she says, goes for organics: “That became the hot topic in 2003, so we put organic produce in. But after we tried it for a year-and-a-half, two years, we came to our usual conclusion – we’re not the best for organic products. That’s not what makes us successful.”
Successful they are. According to a November 2010 poll by Vancouver’s Mustel Group, Kin’s ranked third among popular Lower Mainland grocers (including its old stomping grounds, Granville Island Markets) in offering quality produce at competitive prices.
Chu said that although she and the Leung brothers have distanced themselves somewhat from day-to-day operations to focus on overall quality assurance and managing an ever-expanding team, which includes two locations in Ontario and a growing roster of franchisees, their commitment to freshness remains at the heart of their business.
“This is a very important thing,” she said. “It’s not just something we say to our customers, but something our employees, whether a stock person, cashier, store manager or one of the executive team, have to know. If you’re going to sell fresh produce, it better be fresh.”
Now, with the company’s plans to expand its chain of specialty produce stores to 75 locations in B.C. and Ontario and triple its workforce to over 2,000 employees by 2015, Chu believes Kin’s commitment to quality will help ensure its continued success.
“In Ontario and any other province in Canada, it’s like starting again from where we were in 1987,” she said. “We have to reform relationships with local farmers in those areas, so they know what we expect from them in terms of quality, and build the brand. There are challenges, with our head office in B.C., but if we do everything right, in no time we’ll build our name there, too.”
It is, Chu says, one of the most important business lessons she’s learned: “Focus on what you’re good at and stick with it, don’t look around and change your ideas. If you make mistakes, learn from them and move on – don’t let them happen again.”