A taxonomy of B.C. small town retail chain prestige

Or, Why Getting A McDonald's Matters More Than An A&W

Certain questions need answering.

People had plenty of smart responses, because the question of “what generic retail stuff exists in this small town?” activates a weird part of the brain in local and tourist alike.

For the tourist, whether there’s International Chain X in town can create a shorthand (for good or bad) of how built up the town is, as well as a security blanket in case Brayden is crying and Olive is asking 500 questions and LOOK THERE’S A 7-ELEVEN WE’LL STOP THERE AND GET SNACKS, OKAY?!?

And for the local, the introduction of International Chain X can be a double edged sword, to be interpreted as a Sign Of Progress or evidence Our Little Town’s Charming Way Of Life Is About To Be Overrun.

A lot of these anxieties have come to the forefront in Kimberley, a town of 8,000 people in the B.C.’s Kootenays, where the potential of a McDonald’s is the subject of a fierce rezoning debate.

I wrote about it in my newsletter last week, but I continued to have questions: was a McDonald’s a relatively common thing for a small town in B.C. to have? Kimberley also has a Subway and an A&W, so why did one more fast food outlet matter? And also, what *is* the marker of retail/commercial prestige for a small town that’s higher than a Timmy’s but lower than a BP?

Dear reader, it was time to waste my long weekend.

20 businesses. 99 small towns. 1 winner.

For the purposes of this needless exploration, I put the dividing line for a small town at 9,000 people as of the 2021 Census.

Part of that was because Kimberley has about 8,000 people, but part of the reason is that when you look at the numbers, the biggest towns with more than 9,000 people are places like Quesnel, Sechelt, Williams Lake — big central service areas for their regions of the province, where you would sort of inherently expect them to have all the services.

Just below that are places like Ladysmith, Kitimat, Kimberley and others — communities that aren’t the largest place within 100km, maybe a little off the highway, certainly where the arrival of a New Thing In Town could still be a surprise.

Also, there are 99 of those municipalities in B.C., and that felt like a fun number.

Then, I picked (heavy sigh) 20 food or service-based businesses and (heavier sigh) charted out every municipality they were in.

Those 20 businesses were based on replies to that original Boston Pizza/Tim Horton’s tweet, while eliminating a suggestions that weren’t in enough municipalities. It didn’t include banks or gas stations because banks and gas stations are boring. And for it to be included, it had to exist in at least 3 B.C. small towns.

And here’s what we found.

There is much to take away from this (if you are a nerd), including:

1. I thought that there might be some competition over which business would be the most dominant, but there’s really not: Subways are everywhere, including two towns with under 1,000 people (Fraser Lake and New Hazelton), and are in every small town that has at least 4 of our 20 companies. Which, when you stop to consider the amount of infrastructure/shipping it requires to a Subway one up and then keep it running compared to our other outlets, makes sense.

2. This article needs to be written more than ever.

A&W’s are more pervasive than McDonald’s, more popular than Dairy Queens, and even more prominent than Tim Hortons, which I was fully not expecting.

And there’s also a hierarchy: if a B.C. town has at least 4 of the big 20 outlets, 2 of them will automatically be an A&W and a Subway.

3. There are clear tiers on the path to small-town retail saturation.

After Subway, you’ve got a clear Home Hardware/A&W/Tim Hortons starter pack, followed by an interesting mix in the Kal Tire/Pharmasave/Save-On/7-Eleven/Dairy Queen sector, with as many things servicing locals as tourists.

Then you’ve got McDonald’s as sort of the dividing point, followed by a few prestige brands, followed by a few signs of making it into the big time, and finally a Walmart, which is really the spiritual line in this exercise.

4. There are hundreds more Shoppers Drug Mart locations across Canada than there are Pharmasaves, but there are many more Pharmasaves in small town B.C. than Shoppers. Ditto Panago compared to Domino’s (and Pizza Hut, for that matter). Why some retail outlets become more prominent in smaller communities compared to larger ones is a fascinating question! but one i do not have time to study this weekend

When are we going to get to the taxonomy of B.C. small towns?

So we’ve looked at our 20 businesses by the number of small towns they’re in — now let’s look at our 99 small towns in B.C., which ones have the most chains, and which ones have the least.

#99-#62: NO CHAIN BUSINESSES

There are 38 municipalities in B.C. that have no significant chains (best that we can find), and they can be roughly divided into four groups.

• Semi-rural suburb to a neighbouring big city: Metchosin, Highlands, Anmore, Harrison Hot Springs, Belcarra, Lions Bay, Taylor, Montrose, Warfield, Spallumcheen, Pouce Coupe, Telkwa and Port Edward. They’re either within Metro Vancouver or Greater Victoria, or within a 10 minute drive of a much bigger municipality that has all the regional hub city conveniences one would need.

• Truly tiny towns: Gold River, Canal Flats, Port Alice, Greenwood, Midway, Stewart, New Denver, Tahsis, Slocan, Granisle, Sayward, Hazelton, Silverton, Zeballos. All under 1300 people, mostly in northern Vancouver Island or the Kootenays where towns were colonized 100+ years ago and little has happened economically for many decades, all sort of self explanatory.

• Small island outposts and company towns: Alert Bay, Port Clements, Daajing Giids, Elkford, Logan Lake. You can quibble if you want, but Logan Lake is so synonymous with the Highland Valley Copper mine, and Elkford with all the Teck operations, that I think it’s the most logical explanation for why they don’t have retail chains, despite a population that would sustain it: nobody is going to the town for tourism, and the town is self perpetuating, so there’s no motivation on either side for them to exist.

• Exclusion by design: Cumberland, Bowen Island, Ucluelet, Sun Peaks. All four of these communities are different and cool in their own way, but they’ve all

  • a) made conscious choices not to bring in chain retail business,

  • b) have a population of at least 1400 people, meaning they could easily sustain at least a couple

  • c) have a tourism element to their economies as well, which is partly based on a unique authentic west coast experience that international retail chains would sully, and

  • d) as a result of these tensions, had a fair number of people in their community be anxious about what it would mean if they were arbitrarily called (by a silly, silly person) B.C.’s Best Small Town

  So here they sit! Isn’t this a fascinating way of looking at how branding and small town success relate to commercialization? wait where are you goin

#61-#42: WE’VE GOT A THING OR TWO! (1-2 Chains)

There are 20 of these towns, and you can pretty much separate them again into three basic categories:

• Semi-rural suburb: Peachland, Lantzville, Lumby, Fruitvale

• Truly tiny: Salmo, Kaslo, Fraser Lake, Hudson’s Hope, New Hazelton, McBride, Clinton

• Small island outposts and company towns: Masset, Tumbler Ridge

• Exclusion by design: Tofino, Pemberton, Rossland, Keremeos, Radium Hot Springs

Part of the fun in this category is just the randomness of which business shows up for which municipality — Pemberton gets a McDonald’s! Lumby gets a Tim Horton’s! — and part of it is seeing the patterns clearly revealing themselves.

Then there’s two communities that don’t fit the pattern, which are interesting: Barriere and Port McNeill.

Both traditional logging towns, both have about 2,000 people, both aren’t exactly isolated … but both just have two chains (both have a Subway, Barriere has an A&W, Port McNeill a Kal Tire), despite the fact that comparable municipalities in size and scope (100 Mile House, Lillooet, Chetwynd, Ashcroft, Burns Lake) have several more chain outlets.

Are Barriere and Port McNeill underserved? Are Lillooet and Chetwynd overserved?

these are the important questions nobody is asking

#41-29: OUR EXIT SIGN HAS ICONS (3-5 Chains)

These are the 13 places, typically with a Subway, a Home Hardware or Kal Tire, and then a couple other fast food outlets. And who are they?

• Semi-rural suburb: Kent, Enderby, Chase (next to Chilliwack, Vernon and Kamloops respectively, though they’re all communities of at least 2300 people, and therefore have a few core chains within their own boundaries)

Our first batch of categories stops working at this point, so let’s look at some interesting similarities with the rest of the towns in this group: Cache Creek, Nakusp, Ashcroft, Mackenzie, Port Hardy, Fort St. James, Lake Cowichan, Valemount, Lillooet, Kimberley.

I really enjoy this grouping! They’re all towns on or just off a highway…but it’s typically a more minor highway in B.C.’s system, or a place hours from a major city. They’re sort of isolated, but generally with a few thousand people to have a pretty bustling community.

And then there’s Kimberley!

Looking at the data, there’s a reason the Best Small Town is freaking out over this potential McDonald’s. Excluding the semi-rural suburbs, there are 14 towns in B.C. with between 5,000 and 9,000 people (i am so sorry for doing this), and they have an average of 12.4 chain outlets each.

Kimberley has 5.

In other words, by this point in its development, Kimberley should have more chains. However, it doesn’t, partly because it sort of adopted the Exclusion By Design strategy, and partly because it’s not really on any major highway, so it got kind of excluded.

But now everyone likes Kimberley. And a McDonald’s wants to come to town. So you can understand the tension in town.

isn’t this fun! this is fun right

#28-#16: MID-TIER HIGHWAY TOWNS (6-8 Chains)

Princeton, Fort Nelson, Sparwood, Vanderhoof, Burns Lake, Chetwynd, Sicamous, Houston, Invermere, Gibsons, Clearwater, and Kitimat.

And once again, there’s quite a few similarities between them all, in that they:

• Have between 1500 and 5000 people

• Are directly on a main highway, but aren’t the biggest community on the highway

• Are either waterfront tourism destinations or have a long industrial/resource past

• Have a Subway, A&W and (except for Burns Lake) a Tim Hortons, along with a sprinkling of a few other things

Much like our previous grouping, we’ve got one exception, and this time in comes in Kitimat. With 8200 people it probably could have a ton of stuff, but lacks any giant pizza chains, a McDonald’s, Canadian Tire, etc.

Partly, I imagine, because of the company town history with Alcan, partly because it’s not on the main highway, and partly because Terrace is relatively close with a relatively similar population (12,000 people), so it gets the prestige chains for the region (to the extent that Boston Pizza and Walmart are prestige).

#15-#8: ALMOST FULL SATURATION (8-12 Chains)

Grand Forks, Armstrong, Golden, Revelstoke, Ladysmith, 100 Mile House, Osoyoos, Creston.

This is where we get the difference between “small towns” and “towns that aren’t big, yet whose commercial cores can’t really be described as quaint or chain free”.

We’re at the point where everyone has the Subway/Home Hardware/A&W/Tim Hortons starter pack, and also has a 7-Eleven (except Grand Forks! the teens need to rebel for…i dunno, a slurpee or something) and a Dairy Queen (except Revelstoke, do the same thing teens but for a blizzard, you don’t know what you’re missing out on!)

These are all growing towns on major highways with more than 4,000 people fairly diversified economies, so this level of saturation isn’t surprising…with the exception of 100 Mile House, which operates as the hub for many smaller communities in the lower Cariboo area, many of which also have a mile marker in their name, and provides a convenient excuse to remark how weird it is that we have many, many things in this province named for their distance from the town of Lillooet, start of the Cariboo Wagon Road in the gold rush days.

#7-5: Fernie, Castlegar and Hope (13 Chains)

A surprise! One might think Hope would have all of these elements, given its very unique position as the chokepoint for the entire Lower Mainland, and geographically being in its own weird void an hour drive from anything major, but it strangely lacks both a Home Hardware and Canadian Tire, and misses out on just enough other things to not be in competition for the podium.

(But everyone knows that if you’re stopping anywhere in Hope for food, it’s the Blue Moose)

This is all together a fun little group of three, because you’ve got Pit Stop Champion in Hope, Exploding Resort Town Feeling Pressures in Fernie, and Mid-Sized Regional Service Town in Castlegar, all with a different collection of chains for different reasons, all ending up in this spot.

#4: Trail (14 Chains)

For a town that has lost 33% of its population since the 1950s — when it was arguably one of, if not the most important Interior town in the province — Trail has a surprising number of chains, with the only major omissions being no Kal Tire (there’s an OK Tire) or a Save On’s (there’s a Safeway).

I suspect part of this is because it acts as a regional hub for Rossland, Warfield, Montrose and Fruitvale, giving it another 10,000 or so people to draw upon. And then there’s the fact that it’s been so big for so long, giving plenty of commercially zoned properties that chains can easily move into.

Or maybe international business outlets just really, really like smelters.

#3: Smithers (16 Chains)

Smithers was the winner of the northern B.C. quadrant of the small competition, and it’s a winner with retailers too: even though it only has 5400 people, it profiles from a commercial aspect as a place with double the population.

Smithers checks off basically all the boxes we’ve talked about: on the highway, a regional centre, but is also a 90+ drive from any other major population centre, meaning it’s an easy place for companies to plant their flag in the region, secure that they’ll be able to attract both locals and folks driving through.

The only thing it is *missing* from our list of 20 is a Save-On-Foods (like Trail, they have a Safeway), along with a Wendy’s and a Wal-Mart, but despite that the town has a really good reputation for an independent business and arts scene.

Smithers! Maybe doing the balance okay?

#2: Merritt (17 Chains)

You know what’s ironic?

Merritt is one of those places that might come to mind when you think of that classic tale of a new highway that mows through town, with chain restaurants dotting the street and local small businesses being shunted to the side.

It’s part of the reason why Merritt finished second in this strange competition that I created, lacking only a Wendy’s, Domino’s and Shoppers Drug Mart to complete the total 20 package.

But of course, that main commercial strip isn’t on the main highway. Nor is it in the actual heart of Merritt, unlike some towns on this list.

No, the vast majority of Merritt’s chains operate in that weird transition area between the Coquihalla Highway and the centre of town itself. It’s an interesting situation, because while there’s a giant incentive to make a pit stop given the lack of other options between Hope and Kamloops, you’re already being forced to make a little detour just to get in Merritt, and so there’s no point of venturing further — from a stressed out driver’s point of view — when you stop now and do a quick pit stop in and out of the Starbucks/Tim Hortons/etc.

So to many, there’s no merit in stopping in Meritt, which is a shame, because from Empty Keg Brewhouse to Kekuli Café there’s plenty of interesting options.

Such is the design of highways in British Columbia. And such is the mystery of Meritt.

#1: Duncan (All. 20. Chains.)

Duncan has everything.

All the restaurants on the list. All the retail outlets on the list. Both drug stores, the hotel, the grocery store, the tire outlet — any big commercial chain that does a lot of business in British Columbia, and Duncan is the small town they are most likely to set up shop in.

You might suspect me of cherry-picking 20 specific outlets to have Duncan literally sweep them all, to make it seem like its dominance is greater than in it.

But we could have included other markers of mid-sized community that has a lot happening retail wise, like a Real Canadian Superstore, or a Burger King, or a Mr. Mike’s, or a Home Depot or Dollarama.

Duncan has them too, all with just over 5,000 people in population.

The reasons why are much the same as most top places on our list — right on the highway, the logical stop between two big cities (in this case, Victoria and Nanaimo) to bring in commuter traffic, and plenty of smaller communities adjacent to help ensure steady business from locals.

And so Duncan wins this competition, without it being particularly close.

To loop back to the beginning though, it’s interesting that Duncan, despite having everything one could want from a retail chain perspective, it not a place that people *perceive* as being particularly desirable, at least based of its first round loss in the Small Town competition.

Merritt also lost in the first round as well. Unless a town is growing exponentially, there’s a fascinating relationship between what getting 1 or 2 retail chains says about your town, and what having 15 or 20 feels like.

In summary and conclusion, the answer to the question is McDonald’s.