Healthy Delivery Service Freshmint Makes a Move on Mile End [Updated]

Update (Aug 15): It’s been delivering for a while now, and as of a few weeks ago, the Mile End location for Freshmint is open to the public on Fairmount, just off St-Laurent. With just a handful of seats, it’s a counter-service lunch kind of spot — another lunch option in an area where daytime food options have been burgeoning of late, courtesy of large commercial buildings filling up with start-ups and other offices just a few blocks away, to say nothing of Ubisoft’s nearby HQ. Expect lots of bowls and salads (kale Caesar with chicken, a Cobb salad, a Korean tofu bowl or shrimp poke), priced around the $15 mark.

Four-year-old healthy delivery meal service Freshmint is making its first ever expansion, adding a Mile End location in addition to its original Old Montreal headquarters.

The service was founded in 2013, delivering healthy prepared meals to customers who place orders online or via a mobile app, but has also operated as a comptoir for walk-in customers in Old Montreal (particularly the lunch crowd). The Mile End location, which is in the old Guillaume bakery location on Fairmount (at St-Laurent), will operate in the same way, although counter service won’t open up until summer.

For deliveries, the new location will serve the Plateau, Outremont, Mile End and Mile Ex.

Freshmint co-founder Daniel Perel tells Eater he had been looking to expand for a while, and the north-side location seemed like a hotspot for delivery — it’s also an up-and-coming lunch zone, with a number of casual and comptoir-style restaurants opening up in the area lately (see also: pasta spot Il Miglio, or Korean resto Le Petit Seoul).

“The reason why we came to the area is that we know delivery is very strong in that sector and we wanted to give another healthy delivery option to the population there.”

Freshmint/Supplied

Freshmint’s healthy options don’t necessarily mean dishes laden with frivolous buzz-ingredients, though: it’s a sensible take on health food, and one that suits Montreal with items like slow cooked beef, or a curry carrot-apple soup.

Perel highlighted Moroccan chicken on couscous with roasted vegetables and harissa as an example of one of the service’s dishes of the day — other offerings have included tuna poke or tataki, grain bowls, and a spruced-up Cobb salad.

“It’s our twist with toasted pumpkin seed, cranberries, sweet potato instead of regular potato, with avocado dressing so it’s a little healthier than the traditional blue cheese.”

Freshmint

Freshmint is also one of fewer local businesses taking delivery into its own hands: the service has its own fleet of cars and drivers, a relative rarity now that big-name delivery services Foodora and UberEats have come to dominate much of the delivery scene, signing up hefty slates of local restaurants to work with their fully-centralized systems. (FreshMint is on Just Eat, but that service requires restaurants to provide their own drivers.)

The Fairmount location is now open for delivery — the walk-in comptoir service is in the works for the coming months.

• Freshmint [Official]