Here’s Where Your Favorite Chefs Shop for their Wholesale Restaurant Supplies – Learn More

The fascinating world of diversity that we in southern Ontario have the good fortune to experience, displays its resplendent images and colours as soon as you walk through the doors of an A1 Cash & Carry. You are immediately plunged into a pleasing pastiche of ethnicity – Caribbean, South Asian, African, Far Eastern, European and yes, plenty of Anglo too. All of them with carts stacked head high with everything from fresh produce to commercial kitchen supplies, every conceivable smallware, plastic takeout containers and environmentally friendly cleaning products.

A1 Cash and Carry is one of the largest wholesale food distributor Ontario and a significant restaurant suppliers Toronto and the GTA. Their Mississauga location is 150,000 sq.ft of everything and anything a restaurant could possibly need to carry on business at a high level. There’s aisle upon aisle of colourful steel bulk rack shelving that can be reconfigured like a massive Leggo set to furnish rapid responses to ever changing marketing priorities. Make your way to the spice aisle (yes, a whole aisle for spices) where you will be assailed by an infinite selection of exotic sounding herbs and spices that you’ve never heard of: Degi Mirch. Ajwain Seed. Amchur Powder. Dhana Jeera. Sabudana. Or in the wholesale meat supplier section you can find beef, poultry and best quality seafood supplier Ontario.

A1 is a true testament to doing business in an enterprising, hard working manner – from the racks of products topped with pallets of boxes filling the shelving that soars to 36ft in the air, to its top-notch customer service, to the industrial fork lift trucks busily moving pallets of goods up and down the aisles while you shop. They have a formula that clearly works, as evidenced by winning Citations as one of Macleans Magazine’s Fastest Growing Companies in Canada, five years in a row, including the last two pandemic challenged years. Considering the COVID related restrictions that the restaurant industry has been forced to adopt, A1’s continued growth is remarkable.

Despite its aggressive pricing and price matching, A1 has successfully maintained and even expanded a healthy variety of choice and quality. They now have a full selection of commercial grade restaurant equipment supplies which enables them to fully equip a restaurant startup or upgrade equipment for an established restaurant. Introducing their own brands with offshore bulk manufacturing also enables them to keep ahead of the curve for demand and quality at affordable prices.

For many decades now, Toronto and the GTA have been renowned as a dining mecca that offers a myriad of ethnic choices – a smorgasbord of international cuisine on a world class level. And in order to be a first rate supplier for such a diverse mixture of cuisines, A1 has to have their finger on the specific needs of all these different cultures. And how do they do that? Customer service – by focusing on customer needs and by exploring those needs in depth, then implementing what they learn.

A family owned and family run business, A1 was started by the family patriarch, Jay Parvaiz, 20 years ago. Selling plastic bags wholesale out of his garage as a side hustle, Jay has grown that side hustle into four busy locations serving thousands of customers daily. Plans for at least two more locations outside the GTA will soon be moving from drafting table to brick and mortar.

But perhaps the most important aspect of A1 is its management style. They treat employees, customers, and suppliers like family – with consideration and respect. You’ll never hear raised voices at A1. Not on the warehouse floor nor behind closed doors. They are also proud participants in all kinds of community charities and causes, not the least of which is Mississauga mayor Bonnie Crombie’s annual food drive – to which they donate a ton of food – literally.