Have questions about how to eat healthy at home? Kyan Cuisine has the answer.
The Embrun-based maker of healthy plant-based vegan products, recipes and meals, is expanding its popular home delivery service in Eastern Ontario. The company recently received a $2,500 grant through the Prescott-Russell Entrepreneurship Centre, which went towards a new delivery vehicle to help serve more customers in the area.
Kyan Cuisine offers a wide selection of healthy ready-to-eat dishes on its website. The meals have been receiving rave reviews on Facebook for their excellent taste, natural ingredients and how easy they are to just open and enjoy.
“What’s cool about our products is their simplicity,” explains Aude Martel, who co-owns the company along with partners Vanessa Viau and Samuel Doucet. “They’re easy to grab and go – you don’t have to do any preparation – and they’re healthy.”
Founded by its three partners in September of 2018, Kyan Cuisine first started selling its healthy choices in area grocery stores. When sales in physical stores declined at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the owners made the decision to develop an online store which would offer home delivery.
“It was a big change for us – we essentially created a website in one day,” Viau recalls, of the challenge in switching from retail stores to direct sales online.
Deliveries to individual homes are made on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays each week. To keep things simple, Kyan Cuisine has added a page on its website to show when deliveries will be made to each community in Prescott-Russell. Customers can go here and just type in their postal code to find out their weekly delivery day.
“It’s a very simple system and there’s no confusion as to when we will deliver to your area,” Martel notes.
While online sales now make up the bulk of sales, Kyan Cuisine is gradually rebuilding the availability of its products in grocery stores. The popular Buddha Bowls are available at Foodland stores in Vankleek Hill and Russell, Your Independent Grocers in Hawkesbury and Rockland, and Marche Bonichoix in Embrun. The company is looking to add more items – including chili, spaghetti sauce and soups – and more retail outlets as it continues to grow.
“We want to concentrate more on grocery stores and retail, so that we are in as many places as possible,” says Viau. “We’d like to expand our market into Ottawa, Orleans and western Quebec.”
For the next two months, Kyan Cuisine is offering a discount on orders. Once they have selected their items and placed them in their cart, customers can enter the promo code THEREVIEW10 to receive a 10-per-cent discount on all orders of $50 or more.
“Our meals are suitable not just for vegetarians, but for everyone,” emphasizes Martel, who hopes the promotion will encourage potential customers to try something new. “Good health starts with the foods we eat to nourish our bodies.”
