8:19 am
How A&W Won the Prairies – One Onion Ring at a Time
When A&W set its sights on growing in Western Canada, it didn’t just roll out a standard playbook. It listened—and adapted.
Beef raised without hormones? That landed hard with Prairie sensibilities. Real cheddar and farm-fresh eggs? A nod to the region’s roots in agriculture and quality. And drive-thrus that move fast—even when the snow doesn’t? Essential.
But the biggest move? Locating restaurants near busy highway corridors and rural hubs, where familiarity and consistency are everything.
The result? A&W became a mainstay—not just in cities, but in small towns across the Prairies. All because it knew how to fit in and stand out.
That’s exactly the kind of outcome we enable. With 30+ years of experience executing multi-site builds, our company helps brands like A&W navigate local zoning, land use, and culture to build retail footprints that work—everywhere.
What You’ll Learn
In this post, we break down how CTM helps brands like A&W expand across Western Canada. With more than 30 years of experience, we help retailers navigate municipal regulations, align with local culture, and deliver smart, site-specific solutions for chains that span across the country.
We’ll explore how we use regional data to inform store design and layout—factoring in everything from climate and economic conditions to local preferences—to create spaces that work for both the business and the community.
You’ll also see how our company brings that expertise to life through large-scale retail conversions, such as Husky-to-Co-op and Esso-to-7-Eleven transformations, showcasing their ability to move quickly and execute with precision.
Trust Our Local Knowledge From Coast, to Coast, to Coast
With over 30 years of experience designing multi-site projects for leading Canadian brands, we bring an extensive multi-disciplinary understanding of different localities. Our expertise includes:
- Navigating Municipal Regulations: With a deep understanding of municipal bylaws, zoning, and permitting requirements across jurisdictions.
- Adapting to Local Culture: Including insights into local culture and preferences, with offices across Canada providing regional savvy.
- Site-Specific Solutions: Expertly adapting brand design standards to unique local realities, including site conditions and compliance with regional building codes.
- Understanding Local Ordinances: Specialized knowledge of specific local ordinances such as building and zoning.
How to Put Localization into Practice Across Canada
One great way to adapt your chain is byanalyzing local demographic data, and adjusting store layouts to match the needs of the communities they serve. For instance, in suburban areas with plenty of families, that might mean wider aisles and kid-friendly features. In downtown cores, it’s more about compact, efficient layouts for time-strapped urban shoppers.
Consider Climate and Geography: Engineering for Canada
A key part of adapting your retail locations is matching heating and cooling equipment to local climate, such as heated entrances for prairie winters and HVAC systems that don’t tap out in a Toronto heat wave.
Another key detail is factoring in local economic conditions when considering how to adapt store design. In smaller towns that often means considering cost-efficient formats that align with local tastes and spending habits. In larger urban centers like Toronto, there’s more room for flagship experiences with expanded offerings and elevated design.
Bring Retail Design That Speaks the Local Language – In Style and Substance
Retail building design and preferences also vary by region, and so it’s important to adapt your layouts accordingly; ensuring form matches function along with local expectations. It’s also important to incorporate local materials and sustainable elements that fit with the design intent of the chain, but are also flexible enough to fit the market.
It’s also important to consider what region-specific tech you might need—from bilingual POS systems and signage, to smart energy systems that reduce operational costs without cutting corners.
Finally, it’s important to align store infrastructure with regional product demand—whether that means integrating expanded refrigeration systems for seafood-heavy inventories in the Maritimes, or optimizing dry and cold storage layouts for seasonal surges in cottage-country locations. We engineer spaces to suit the product, not the other way around.
Meeting Accessibility Code and Exceeding Expectations
Our company treats accessibility not as a checkbox, but as an essential part of inclusive design. We ensure all physical spaces meet or exceed legal requirements—think ramp grades, doorway clearances, washroom layouts—but we also go further.
Our designs take cues from local demographic profiles: higher proportions of seniors may prompt wider aisles and seating areas, while communities with neurodiverse populations might benefit from lower-stimulation lighting or quieter zones. By looking beyond building codes and considering the lived experience of customers, we help retailers create stores that don’t just allow access — but genuinely invite everyone in.
Case Studies: Scaling Smart – Rebrands at Speed and Scale
Our company has proven its ability to execute complex, multi-site retail transformations under pressure. In two standout, large scale conversion projects including 91 Husky-to-Co-op conversions and 74 Esso to 7-Eleven redesigns.
91 Husky to Co-op: Scale Meets Strategy
When tasked with converting 91 Husky stations into Co-op locations, we embraced the complexity. Each site needed full renovation and rebranding, all while navigating a patchwork of municipal and provincial regulations.
By using an integrated workflow—including Matterport 3D scanning, overlapping drawing and tender phases, and coordinated construction—we kept all 91 sites moving forward, each with its own unique challenges.
74 Esso to 7-Eleven: Smart Design, Fast Builds
We also led the conversion of 74 Esso On the Run stores into 7-Eleven locations across BC and Alberta. Many spaces were smaller than typical 7-Elevens, so we created new store standards that fit essential features—like beverage stations and walk-in coolers—into tight footprints.
For 40 of the sites, we also managed construction on an accelerated one-week schedule, working around constraints like noise bylaws and varied building conditions while maintaining quality and pace.
Localization Isn’t Optional: It’s the Operating System
As the examples throughout this post have shown, successful retail expansion in Canada isn’t just about scaling up—it’s about dialling in. From climate adaptation in Winnipeg to footprint constraints in downtown Vancouver, national brands face hyper-local challenges that can’t be solved with a standard template.
Take A&W’s growth across the Prairies. Their success wasn’t just about putting up more signs—it was about tuning into regional values, from hormone-free beef to faster drive-thrus that keep pace with long winters and long highways. It’s a reminder that localization isn’t cosmetic—it’s foundational.
Whether it’s navigating municipal bylaws, optimizing layouts for seasonal product shifts, or integrating sustainable systems that align with regional priorities, our company delivers the kind of precision needed to execute consistently at scale—without missing the local mark.
In a country where architecture, inventory, and even language can vary significantly from province to province, our integrated, locally attuned approach is what transforms strategy into execution, and execution into measurable success.
