Weekly Regional Business Intelligence | | | Written by Kieran Delamont, Associate Editor, London Inc. | | | Booch Organic Kombucha sold to new ownership group Ex-Motif Labs founder Mario Naric is part of a group that has acquired London’s Booch Organic Kombucha, the two parties announced. “This week marks the 10-year anniversary of Booch, and with that a passing of the torch,” said Booch founder Shannon Kamins (pictured, centre, with new ownership group) in a LinkedIn announcement. “With a breath of fresh air, a new vision and some big dreams, this new team is going to grow Booch far beyond what I could have imagined ― or could have done alone!” The new ownership group is largely composed of former leadership at Motif Labs, the cannabis extraction company that was purchased by Organigram for $90 million last year. From Motif, Naric is joined by Chad Gray, who was Motif’s VP of commercialization and Alicia McLeod, who worked in the company’s social media department. Also on board is Sadie McCann, who has a marketing background with stints at Molson Coors and OSG, a workplace wellbeing company. “Shannon Kamins has done a fantastic job building a staple, London-based brand with kick-ass products,” Naric said. “As a long time Booch consumer, and friend, I couldn’t be more excited to embark on this adventure alongside her and the rest of the acquiring team.” The upshot: Fresh off a major cash-out in the Organigram deal, and perhaps with a bit of capital burning a hole in the pocket, it’s a bit of a surprise announcement ― but an interesting one. Naric scaled Motif Labs up quickly and skilfully, turning it into one of the more successful cannabis processors and white labellers in the business, so it will be interesting to see what he and the others in this ownership group have planned for Booch. The probiotic drink and functional beverage market is super buzzy right now, with big players getting in on kombuchas and probiotic sodas, so there could be another build-scale-sell strategy at play here. Read more: LinkedIn | | | 35-storey tower pitched for Richmond and Oxford A large residential tower (rendering pictured) is being pitched to replace the building that formerly housed Urban Outfitters at the southwest corner of Oxford and Richmond (the two-storey building continues to be home to additional retailers, including Wine Rack and Your Highness). Toronto-based developer Fitzrovia is proposing a 512-unit, 35-storey tower with commercial space on the ground floor, which would radically reshape the busy intersection. “This landmark building will enhance the downtown skyline and serve as a true gateway to the city’s north core, offering a vibrant home for students, young professionals and the broader community,” Fitzrovia founder Adrian Rocca told The London Free Press. Ward 13 councillor David Ferreira is backing the proposal, saying that the intersection has been “underused for decades” and that “we have a lot of underutilized spaces downtown, and we need to bring them online.” Planning committee chair Steve Lehman is also sounding positive about the development, telling the Free Press that “this is the place for highrise developments, in my opinion.” The proposal will go before committee in early June, where the main issues will likely be infrastructure and traffic congestion. The upshot: Rocca will not be a name that’s necessarily familiar to Londoners, as this is Fitzrovia’s first foray outside of Toronto. Rocca has also been vocal about his belief in the purpose-built rental market ― in November, Fitzrovia launched a $1.1 billion fund, backed by “several of the country’s largest pension plans,” per The Globe and Mail, laser-focused on funding the expansion of the rental supply. “I’m in love with the sector: buying a piece of dirt, putting it all together and then seeing people live there,” he told Toronto Life in January, talking about purpose-built rentals. “Most Canadian developers focus on condos. They do it to make more money but also because there’s a stigma around renting. So, I want to address that problem head on.” Just don’t expect new arrival Rocca to get in on the city’s effort to convert old office buildings to residential: “Most offices don’t lend themselves to residential conversions — they’re large, with a central core, which results in either bowling-alley-style suites with very little natural light or oversized units, which drive down the rent per square foot that developers can charge,” he has said. Read more: London Free Press | CBC News London | | | Carfax partners with Kijiji to deliver improved vehicle valuations Carfax Canada and Kijiji are partnering to provide used car buyers on the Kijiji platform better information and valuation capabilities. Based on a previously announced tie-in with AutoVerify, the integration will provide the average market price of a used car model for every auto listing on Kijiji, “enabling sellers to set competitive asking prices while giving buyers peace of mind that they are getting a fair deal.” The platform will tag the listing with a deal rating ranging from “great price” to “higher price” based on how asking price stacks up to the average market value. “With economic changes impacting prices in real-time, our partnership with Kijiji to help bring additional understanding and transparency to vehicle valuation is more important than ever,” said Shawn Vording, president of Carfax Canada. Kijiji’s chief sales officer Leanne Kripp said the partnership “allows us to provide even greater value and transparency to our users by enhancing their understanding of used vehicle prices. This collaboration ultimately helps make car shopping easier.” The upshot: Once upon a time, Kijiji was the place to go for buying just about anything online, including used cars ― but with the advent of online-only dealerships like Clutch, CarDoor and CarGurus, plus continued dominance from AutoTrader.ca and second-hand market creep from Facebook Marketplace, it has slipped somewhat in the Canadian market. A couple of years ago, Kijiji, AutoVerify and TD Auto Finance partnered on a similar platform upgrade, adding in loan pre-qualification. This additional partnership will help bring Kijiji inline with its competitors in terms of the online shopping experience, and the timing could work in its favour as well: with tariffs expected to boost the price of new vehicles, used car activity is expected to jump. Read more: Businesswire | | | Goodwill Amity merged with London operation London-based Goodwill Industries, Ontario Great Lakes (Goodwill Industries OGL) and Goodwill Amity, based in Hamilton and Halton Region, announced this week they are merging to form a single employment services entity in Southern Ontario. Effective June 1, the combined entity will operate under the Goodwill Industries OGL banner. “With our combined expertise, we’re confident this unification will create even greater value for our communities, team members and partners,” said Michelle Micuda, who chairs the Goodwill OGL board of directors. Glen Norton, the chair of the Goodwill Amity board, said it was a “bold, strategic step forward.” The CEO of Goodwill Amity Tracy Cunning added that “together we will build a stronger Goodwill across our collective region, expanding opportunity and helping more people enter or re-enter the workforce.” The upshot: It’s not the first regional merger for Goodwill. After a cash crunch caused them to close dozens of stores and scale back operations in 2016, Goodwill Industries OGL absorbed its Essex Kent Lambton counterpart in in 2019. At the time, then-president of Goodwill OGL Michelle Quintyn said, “Scale is a way that is more sustainable and prosperous for Goodwill … with the cost of business going up, scale just makes sense.” This week’s announcement seems to be cut from the same cloth, with current Goodwill OGL president Bev Kobe saying the merger would open up “new possibilities for continued growth and innovation ― not only advancing our work in the circular economy, but growth in development and career opportunities for our workforce.” Read more: Goodwill | | | New hours at Covent Garden Market: mixed reviews from vendors Vendors at the Covent Garden Market are offering mixed reviews of the new operating hours that came into effect on Thursday, with some saying it’s cutting into business. As of May 1, the market is now closed on Mondays, open from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday (shifting the hours later by one hour) and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sundays (earlier by one hour). A number of vendors recently told CBC News London that the shift in hours (and the Monday closure) has been divisive. “Some vendors are not happy about opening late, some are happy with that,” said Anna Turkiewicz, owner of Kleiber’s Deli. “For my business to be closed on Monday, it’s not really good because I’m going to lose money, and I cannot recover the sales on Sunday.” Others told CBC they were happy about it. “Being open until 7 p.m. is going to be fantastic,” said Guindon Creations owner Pat Guindon. The coffee shops, Hasbeans and the Market Cafe, also successfully lobbied for exemptions to the hours, allowing them to continue opening at 8 a.m. Also frustrating vendors is the ongoing construction to Market Square, which has impeded main-door access and blacked out the front windows with construction fencing. “If you look at the windows, they’re all black. People don’t want to sit there, they want to see the view outside,” said the owner of the Market Cafe. Construction isn’t expected to wrap up until September. The upshot: There’s a long-term shift at play here, and Covent Garden Market management has been open about the fact that the changes are aimed at capturing more of the downtown residential crowd, as opposed to waiting for downtown office foot traffic to return. “When our doors are closed at 6 p.m., by the time (downtown residents) come home from work and come over to get something to make for dinner, our doors are closed,” manager Amy Shackleton told The London Free Press earlier this year. With lots of housing development going on in the core (resident population numbers are up 12 per cent over the past three years, according to Downtown London’s numbers) and still no major grocery store, the market sees itself as an obvious beneficiary. In any case, the numbers will be something to keep an eye on, and so far this year they have been good: Shackleton said that in March of this year, sales were up 10 per cent and foot traffic was up eight percent. Read more: CBC News London | | | International student applications down at Western and affiliate colleges Application rates from international students are cooling down at London’s universities, according to new data released by the Ontario University Application Centre. International applications to Western were down 5.4 per cent, while applications to Huron and King’s were down 12.6 and 18.9 per cent, respectively. “We knew that we were going to take a hit, and sure enough we have,” Huron president Barry Craig told CBC News London. The flipside, though, is that domestic, in-province applicants are up by 10.6 per cent at Western, 23.3 per cent at Huron and 10.7 per cent at King’s. Those two numbers appear driven by two trends: the first is the cap on international students making Canada a less attractive place to apply, and the second being the increasing emphasis on affordability among Canadian students. “It’s just not in my budget [to attend a distant school],” one Grade 11 student told the CBC. “It’s really expensive to go out of province now,” another high school student said. Overall, international student applications to Ontario universities are down 11 per cent, representing a nearly 59,000 drop in the total number of applications. However, domestic applications are stronger than ever, with over 100,000 applications from Ontario high school students, nearing the peak of 2003, the year of the “double cohort” following the elimination of Grade 13. The upshot: This isn’t a situation where the number of international applicants is being artificially depressed by the federal government’s reduced international student caps, but it does suggest the trend is causing many international students to rethink applying to Ontario universities. And it does post revenue challenges for Western and its affiliates, which had been hoping to increase the number of international students. Even with the new cap, Western generally has permits that go unused every year, and their corporate strategy has been to increase international recruitment to help fill funding gaps, even going so far as to publicly muse about privatizing some parts of international student education via a partnership with Australian education company Navitas. Despite the shifting numbers, the schools aren’t sounding alarm bells just yet, although they acknowledge the long-term forecast still suggests that a new funding model needs to be worked out with upper levels of government. “We’re looking okay right now, but down the road it’s not a pretty picture for any university in the province unless we see some changes,” said Craig. “Tuition has been frozen for a decade and so have the government grants.” Read more: CBC News London | | | Dispatch: May 2, 2025 A summary of recent business appointments and announcements, plus event listings for the upcoming week. View listings here | | | | |