Online grocery retailer Spud has launched a new initiative to promote more women-led brands.

The retailer’s DEI commitment, called #HerFairShare, aims to increase visibility and equity for women-led/founded brands in the CPG and grocery industry. The initiative will see Spud work to increase its selection of women-led grocery brands from 20% to 25% of its offerings by 2025. The initiative launched on International Women’s Day (March 8), with the retailer starting the campaign by taking applications now for five new openings on its storefront exclusively for women-led brands.

This commitment comes from the brand’s findings that female entrepreneurs in Canada still face barriers to getting their product on shelves, particularly in accessing financing. Spud typically aims to help independent and startup brands to begin with, the retailer’s VP of marketing Bridget Westerholz says, having done this in the past by never charging listing fees for vendors.

But more than that, Westerholz says Spud wanted to do more to help women-owned brands, and through that, help broaden local economies in Canada.

“Diversity of our economy is really important, and diversity within the food space is really important. If we’re not shining a spotlight on female-owned (businesses), they’re not going to get the opportunity to grow,” Westerholz tells strategy. 

“We’re trying to remove those barriers by saying no listing fees, therefore hopefully it’s a little easier on funding to get onto the shelf. And then we will give you visibility from a vendor perspective.”

Westerholz adds that Spud reached out to women founders to ask them about the problems they’re facing and what’s been successful for their brands, to find out how Spud can do more to assist.

“We work with our vendors to try and help them create a product that would work on shelves for our customers. We work a lot hand in hand, because we’re a small, nimble independent. We can co-create products that will work for our customers, that we can market to customers,” Westerholz says.

Spud has partnered with Rethink to create marketing assets for the campaign, which has social and paid media behind it. The campaign includes Spud setting up a webpage specifically for female-founded brands, and a landing page for applicants to the retailer’s #HerFairShare initiative.

Haberman is Spud’s media agency.