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Our Company
Article as seen in Mehfil Magazine.
 Nine years ago, Tony Singh was visiting the Lower Mainland from Montreal when he noticed something was missing.
“Given the size of the Indo-Canadian community here, I was surprised to see that there was no produce store that offered a wide variety of fresh, high-quality Indian produce,” he says.
At the time, Singh was working for a Montreal produce business, helping to set up stores that specialized in exotic fruits and vegetables. He seized the opportunity to take his experience in the industry and use it to establish a business of his own.
In December 1994, Singh opened the doors of the first Fruiticana outlet. Visitors to the store in Newton were greeted by a display of high-quality produce that they weren’t used to seeing all in one place. “We had everything from guavas to okra to sweet potatoes to sugar cane,” says Singh. “Right away, customers fell in love with our products. Within a month of our opening, people who for years had been going to supermarkets or to Main Street were coming to Fruiticana.”
Since he was in the store himself every day, Singh had a chance to see customers’ reaction firsthand, and he was pleased to see that Fruiticana really was giving people something they’d been missing.
“I was the cashier, I was the guy who stocked the shelves,” he says of working 16-hour days at the store in those early days. “I wanted to see and hear how people were reacting.”
Singh loves the idea of bringing a taste of India to people living in Canada. “The first time we brought a sugar-cane juicing machine into the store, we had a two-hour lineup,” he recalls. “People were waiting with milk jugs and pots and pans for sugar-cane juice. I remember, one man came up to me and said that it was the first time in 30 years that he’d tasted sugar-cane juice. He said that he’d been to India many times since he moved here but he’d never been able to go when it was in season there. I felt good that I was giving people access to something from India that they hadn’t been able to find here before.”
Singh could relate to such longings. Growing up in Montreal, he often yearned for the foods he’d loved as a small child in India.
 “I would dream of the food that I used to eat,” he says. “The taste stays in your mind and you dream of it. I wanted to give people a chance to re-experience their favourite foods.”
The Fruiticana prospect proved to be so popular that Singh opened a second store within eight months of the first one. In response to customer demand, Singh began offering groceries as well as fresh produce at Fruiticana.
Fruiticana’s success quickly sparked interest from prospective business owners and Singh decided to franchise the concept. Singh helped establish three Fruiticana franchises that are still going strong today and opened six more Fruiticana stores himself. Today, there are nine Fruiticana outlets in the Lower Mainland, including a “mega store” on Scott Road in Surrey that allows customers to shop for meat and sweets as well as produce and groceries in one location.
“We brought in a meat shop and a sweet shop so when customers come, they can park their car once, and get everything under one roof,” says Singh. The concept has proved to be so successful that Singh is making plans to establish more mega stores.
Today, Fruiticana has more than 120 employees, including a staff devoted to finding Indian products that are currently unavailable here. Singh’s time is spent mostly in the company’s head office, where he focuses on finding high-quality products for his stores.
“I keep on top of what’s going on around the world in terms of new products,” he says. “It’s my job to make sure the stores have the right products at the right season.”
For the last three years, Singh has been running a wholesale business that not only supplies the Fruiticana stores but clients all over the world.
 “From our 50,000-sq.-ft. warehouse, we supply stores in Alberta, Winnipeg and we ship to California, Singapore, Hong Kong, all over the world,” he says.
Singh sees no end in sight for the company, which recently won a Consumer’s Choice Award for business excellence in the retail category.
“First of all, we want to capture the rest of B.C., there’s a lot more to do here. And then I’m looking at Alberta, Ontario and California.”
Many stores have come and gone in the years that Fruiticana has continued to thrive and Singh attributes the company’s success to his focus on his initial vision: To offer customers a little of India in a clean, organized shopping environment.
“Our whole idea is to help preserve the culture,” says Singh. “Be Canadian but remember India.”
Recognizing that a big part of any culture is the food associated with special occasions, Singh ensures that such products are available in a timely fashion.
“For example, Lohri is not Lohri without food,” he says. “You have to have saag in your house that day and you have to have revedi and peanuts. I provide that. My first year on Lohri, we sold maybe a hundred cases of peanuts. Now we sell 3,000 cases of peanuts. We gave people a chance to celebrate with high quality traditional foods, and our customers respond to that.”
What he loves most about his business is the opportunity to face and overcome hurdles, says Singh.
“What I enjoy most is the challenge. Going from one store to two stores to seeing how far I can go, that’s what keeps me going. It’s the satisfaction of starting a project and watching it grow.”
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