The biblical story of the Exodus from Egypt, which forms the central part of the Passover Seder, tells often of intra-Jewish strife. Such conflict has also erupted between two Toronto-area kosher supermarkets in the busy shopping days leading up to the holiday.
Olive Branch, which opened last year in Thornhill, alleged in a Facebook post last week that a Sobeys store had pressured suppliers to cut ties with his supermarket or risk losing business from Sobeys.
The latter chain traces its first store back to 1947 and its origins to 1907. The Sobeys store in Thornhill on Clark and Hilda Avenues has a particularly large kosher selection.
Justin Lesnick, cofounder and CEO of Olive Branch, told JNS that his business was “being bullied.” In the Facebook post, Olive Branch said that Sobeys Clark and Hilda, which also goes by Sobeys Kosher Market, sought to use its “market dominance to block our access to products.”
“This is not fair competition. It’s corporate intimidation, and it’s likely a violation of the Competition Act, which prohibits abuse of market power to limit consumer choice and punish smaller players,” Olive Branch stated on Facebook. (The Competition Act, which passed in 1985, covers “general regulation of trade and commerce in respect of conspiracies, trade practices and mergers affecting competition.”)
“What makes this even harder is that the suppliers themselves are mostly small businesses too, caught in the middle, fearful of losing a decade’s worth of business with a giant retailer,” Olive Branch added. (JNS sought comment from the head office of Sobeys and from the location in Thornhill.)
Lesnick told JNS that the Sobeys corporate office apologized directly to him and to vendors and said that it was a store-level and not a head office decision, and “it does not align with their core values.” Although food deliveries weren’t placed on hold, he said that the ordeal caused him and his staff “stress and distraught” trying to address the potential risk of financial loss at such a busy time of year.
The silver lining, according to Lesnick, is seeing the “power of community.”
“We will not let big corporations prevent a small Jewish business from doing business with another small Jewish business,” he told JNS. “We will never back down, be bullied. I’m more confident and more happy and more proud that our entire community got together, stood together and basically fixed a situation.”
‘Overcharged’
Lesnick, 42, who is not Jewish, opened Olive Branch on Oct. 31, 2024 backed by Canadian and U.S. investors. He did so in Jewish-heavy Thornhill, just north of Toronto, because he wanted to open an independent, all-kosher supermarket after spending two years at a local No Frills franchise.
He was convinced that kosher consumers were being “overcharged” at other stores.
His success, he told JNS, is due to a higher power “looking over me.” He added that he seeks advice on what to stock for holidays, product assortment and which kosher certifiers are reliable from Rabbi Mendel Kaplan of Chabad Flamingo in Thornhill.
“Exactly how much hamantaschen to make, right?” Lesnick told JNS, laughing.
Kaplan told JNS that he introduced Lesnick to Judaism and to Jews in 2017, when Lesnick was working at No Frills. They collaborated first on a Chanukah menorah lighting at No Frills, and Lesnick was surprised to find that 100 people attended—a testament to Kaplan’s social media and email and text message lists—an event that was only planned the day prior.
“He was blown away,” Kaplan said. The rabbi subsequently leveraged his communications channels to tell people about the store’s kosher offerings. (Kaplan told JNS that he’s not looking to convert anyone, but many non-Jews come to him for spiritual guidance.)
Shlomo Assayag, who runs the delivery service KosherMeats2U in Toronto, has also offered Lesnick suggestions on which products to stock and said that the two became friends.
Assayag told JNS that his company is “not taking sides” in the controversy between Olive Branch and Sobeys and that the issue is being dealt with and “everything’s going to be good.”