How to Build a Family Food Business in Canada as an Immigrant
Louis Bontorin's father landed in Halifax from Italy in 1954 with instructions to head to Calgary and little else. By 1967, the bank was telling him to declare bankruptcy on the bakery he'd started with his wife's inheritance. On the show, Louis, now co-owner of Calgary Italian Bakery, walked through how that business survived, and what three generations of running it have taught him about the promises that actually keep customers coming back.
From Halifax to a Calgary bakery: how the story began
Louis's father, Luigi, arrived in Halifax in 1954 and was told, like many immigrants at the time, where to go next. He ended up in Calgary, the oldest of ten children back in Italy, with a brother and sister joining him in Canada for a few years decades later but never staying for good. His first job was bush work outside the city, cutting trees for two dollars a day and all the food he could eat. He called it one of the best jobs he ever had.
That winter, when the work froze up, he needed a place in the city and ended up boarding at a house run by a woman whose daughter would become his wife. He was invited to a Christmas party through his job at White Rose Petroleum, now Shell, and asked her to be his date. They married about a year later, in September 1959.
When White Rose downsized during one of the oil patch's regular busts, Luigi took his severance, added his wife's inheritance from her mother's passing, and opened a bakery in 1962. He'd learned the trade from an uncle back in Italy. It took eight years to turn a real profit. In 1967, the bank suggested he declare bankruptcy. He didn't. A detour into buying a small grocery store made things worse for a couple of years before he closed it and went back to the bakery alone, then spent a couple more years paying off the debt.
Why "your word is your honor" still runs the business
Louis says his father's biggest lesson had nothing to do with recipes. A handshake was your word, and if delivering on that word meant losing money on an order, you delivered anyway. Luigi didn't separate himself from the business either. His name was on it, all one word, Luigi Bontorin Calgary Italian Bakery, and he was the face of it. Louis and his brother Dave grew up treating the bakery the same way, like a fourth sibling.
Louis puts the customer relationship in restaurant terms: you're judged on your last delivery the way a chef is judged on your last meal. Fifty good visits disappear the moment one goes wrong. That matters more for a bakery than for a car dealership, he points out, because bread is a repeat purchase. People buy it two or three times a week, not once every ten years. Losing trust on one delivery costs you the next fifty.
How to break into a crowded market without competing on price
Louis's advice for anyone starting a food business, immigrant or not, is to pick a lane other than price. "If you're going to live by the sword, you die by the sword," he says. There's always someone willing to sell white bread cheaper. Commodities like plain white bread, hamburger buns and hot dog buns go on sale in every grocery store; the specialty products rarely do.
He points to newer waves of immigration as an obvious opening. A recent wave of newcomers from Ukraine, for example, creates demand for the bread and baked goods people already know from home. He also watches Europe for what's coming next, since trends there tend to reach the Canadian prairies six months to a year later, whether it's a new bun style or a different bake replacing the plain hamburger bun. Spotting the gap first, he says, is the real advantage.
Raising the next generation without forcing it
Louis started working at the bakery at 12; his younger brother Dave started at 11. Louis's own three kids, a son and two daughters, were what he calls "volunteered" into the business as children, packing buns and sweeping floors before moving into the store and the production line. None of them work at the bakery today. One became a registered dietitian, another works in marketing.
Louis compares pushing kids toward the family business to pushing a kid into hockey or piano lessons: push too hard and they grow to hate it. His approach is to expose them to every part of the operation, production, sales, marketing, research and development, quality assurance, and then let them choose. He's seen it work the other way too. He knows a bakery owner in Winnipeg whose son practiced law for fifteen years before coming back to run the business.
A recipe change that honors where it started
About six years ago, Louis and Dave decided to go clean label, cutting ingredients customers can't pronounce, like the preservative calcium propionate, and relying instead on a more acidic formulation that resists mold naturally. Louis is blunt about what that means: bread is supposed to mold eventually. If a loaf sits on a shelf for a month with no sign of it, that should raise questions, not confidence.
The decision Louis calls the most memorable of his career came from around that same period: a line of bread that put his parents' photo, taken at their 25th wedding anniversary, on the bag. Both of his parents have since passed away. He describes it as the one closest to his heart because it ties the business back to where it started. His father used to say the sun will rise tomorrow, meaning there's always another day to keep pushing forward, a habit that has carried the bakery through harder years than most people would guess from the storefront.
Key takeaways
- Deliver on what you say, even when it costs you. Customers judge a business on its last delivery, not its track record.
- Differentiate on quality or service, not price. Commodity products always have a cheaper competitor waiting.
- New immigrant communities, and trends from the markets people left behind, can reveal gaps in the Canadian market before anyone else spots them.
- Prepare the next generation by exposing them to every part of the business, then let them choose freely instead of pushing them into it.