Why Us?

Our beginnings are humble. In 1976, freshly immigrated to Canada, Ignazio Bondi tried his hand without much success at several odd jobs around the city to make a living for himself and his family. At the encouragement of his wife, he headed to the Ontario Food Terminal one morning and bought a small assortment of fruits and vegetables, packed them into the trunk of his car, and went knocking on the back doors of local restaurants hoping he could sell a case or two for a profit. It was his first foray into the produce business and little did he know he was laying the foundations for what would become Bondi Produce and Specialty Foods.

Those car deliveries eventually became too big, so he bought a truck. When the truck became full, he converted the three car garage of his Markham, Ontario home into a refrigerated warehousing facility. He worked around the clock, delivering seven days a week, including holidays.

Less than a decade later, it would be Ignazio’s son, Gus, who would assume the reigns of the company and propel it forward with his vision of being an everyday low price boutique wholesaler. The second generation of Bondi Produce saw rapid growth through innovation and sales. With a knack for negotiation, Gus worked tirelessly to cultivate relationships with suppliers local and abroad in order to offer the most competitive prices he could. He was also instrumental in establishing Bondi’s retail DSD division by leveraging its purchasing power and distribution capabilities. During this time, Bondi Produce also began sourcing its potatoes, onions, and root vegetables directly from local farms.

In 2000, Bondi moved into a 16,000 square foot facility just outside of Toronto’s downtown core and set its sights on becoming one of Toronto’s premier produce distribution companies. With the third generation of the family entering the business for the first time, a new focus on branding and IT infrastructure emerged during this decade. We rebranded ourselves, launched www.bondiproduce.com, and embraced this new thing called social media.

As Toronto was quickly becoming a culinary destination thanks to a new crop of amazing new restaurants—like the Black Hoof and Bar Isabel—we shifted our focus to strengthening our supply chain. We began to build relationships with growers locally and abroad and championed farms with innovative new products. We built a reputation for finding unique ingredients and hands-on service.

In 2014, we became members of Produce Alliance, a buying group of over 50 independently owned distributors with $4 billion in purchasing power. We got a new place, too. In October of that year we set up shop in our 40,000 square foot facility on New Toronto Street.

With minimum wages rising and quality back of house labor proving to be difficult to find, we launched the New Toronto Food Co. to offer fresh cut produce options to restaurants. When we first started, we had zero manufacturing expertise and no customers. So we challenged our existing customers to let us do their most labor intensive tasks in the kitchen. Our first gig was cutting chiffonade kale for a popular salad at a local restaurant. Today, we chiffonade over 3,000 pounds of kale!

With our backs against the wall due to COVID, we rolled up our sleeves and launched Bondi Home Delivery. What began as a small skunkworks project to move excess inventory quickly morphed into a way for us to share our passion to food with the public. We also got to showcase some of our friends’ amazing food thanks to our Restaurant Partners Program.

Construction begins on our 40,000 square foot outbound distribution centre. Located next door to our current space, this state of the art facility will allow us to carry ingredients beyond produce and will give us the largest footprint of any Toronto foodservice distributor.

Our distribution centre expansion is complete. Fitted with an additional 40,000 square feet of refrigerated space (plus an additional 7,000 sqf of freezer storage), Bondi becomes the largest foodservice distributor of produce and specialty ingredients in Ontario.

Bondi’s sister company, New Toronto Food Co., completes its acquisition of The Produce Counter–making it one of Ontario’s premier regional processors of fresh fruits and vegetables.