Features

Nadia Jubinville – Goodfood

Goodfood’s great idea: delivering dining to your door

During COVID-19, housebound Canadians hankering for ready-to-cook meals inspired found relief just a mouse click away.

That is, thanks to Goodfood, an online grocery and home meal kit company headquartered in Montreal, Quebec. Under its business model, customers can subscribe and order fresh food, or savory snacks delivered the same day with no delivery fee nor minimum order size, says Nadia Jubinville, Goodfood’s vice president of legal affairs, general counsel and corporate secretary.

Nadia Jubinville | General Counsel and Corporate Secretary | Goodfood

Nadia Jubinville | General Counsel and Corporate Secretary | Goodfood

Founded by entrepreneurs Jonathan Ferrari and Neil Cuggy in 2014, Goodfood became listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: FOOD) in 2017. To date it has already captured almost half of the Canadian meal-kit market and ranked No. 1 in Canada and No. 3 in North America on the list of fastest growing companies by the Financial Times this year—the only Canadian company to earn that designation.

“The pandemic fast-tracked our growth plan,” Jubinville says. “What happened in one year was initially planned to happen over a longer period of time—but here we are … and we are just getting started. Our vision is to be in every kitchen, enabling our members to complete their grocery shopping and meal planning in minutes, all online.”

Exponential expansion

Since arriving at the company seven months ago, Jubinville’s work has been nonstop. Within days, she was busy establishing the company’s first legal function while leading real estate transactions and other major projects to support Goodfood’s objective of opening more distribution centers across Canada.

According to Jubinville, the company has three core business lines: ready-to-cook meals, ready-to-eat meals and private-label grocery items. Goodfood’s offerings are expanding, and Jubinville works on supplier agreements, marketing, financing, e-commerce, privacy and employment matters, to name a few.

Nadia Jubinville | General Counsel and Corporate Secretary | Goodfood

“There’s plenty to keep me busy,” Jubinville says with a laugh. “I’m setting the legal foundation and helping support major growth plans, all at once.”

With six distribution centers operating in Canada and a seventh under construction near Toronto, Jubinville knows her team will need to be ready to support even more growth. To keep pace, Jubinville is considering artificial intelligence-based solutions, a contract management platform, and a standardized digital contract process to handle everything from onboarding suppliers to collecting digital signatures.

Right place, right time

Whatever path she chose, Jubinville had plenty of education, skills and experience to draw from: a civil law bachelor’s degree from University of Montreal earned in 1996 and an MBA from HEC Montreal completed in 2003. Starting her career at top-tier Canadian law firms, Jubinville first took a position in litigation at McCarthy Tetrault. Later she joined the corporate and securities law group at Stikeman Elliott.

Prior to joining Goodfood, Jubinville had spent more than 20 years  in management, including more than 16 years as in-house counsel for four companies. She was vice president of legal and corporate affairs, general counsel and corporate secretary at Solotech; vice president of legal affairs at Fiera Capital Corporation; associate general counsel at TELUS; and senior director of legal affairs at the National Bank of Canada.

Nadia Jubinville | General Counsel and Corporate Secretary | Goodfood

A friend then tipped her off to the opportunity at Goodfood when COVID-19 hit. Jubinville says she wasn’t really looking for a change, but after meeting the team she concluded that it was the right fit for her based on her experience and professional aspirations.

“I had always wanted to be part of a growth story from the ground up, working closely with founders and helping them achieve success. This was it. I had to seize the opportunity,” says Jubinville. “The online grocery industry is still at an early stage in Canada, but is among the fastest-growing and rapidly-changing industries in the world. It’s exciting to be part of a trend that’s gaining momentum and growth.”

Jubinville says the scope of the work touched upon her prior experiences including litigation, daily commercial and corporate work, managing securities law compliance and navigating highly regulated industries. She was also accustomed to handling fast-growing technology-driven work with security and privacy components. Her management experience also came in handy building Goodfood’s first legal department.

With the pace of operations, Jubinville recently hired a new team member to support real estate and construction matters with her. That leaves her more time to turn her attention to other strategic aspects of the business, namely the private label grocery and procurement.

“Most rewarding to me is knowing that I’m contributing to the growth of the business in an industry that’s experiencing rapidly changing movement in consumer habits,” she says. “The satisfaction comes when colleagues approach my team for business advice with a legal component—because they trust that together we can find the right solution to make things happen. People who know me know I am a problem solver. I don’t see roadblocks. I only see solutions.”

View this feature in the Vanguard Summer IV 2021 Edition here.

Published on: June 30, 2021

regions:

categories:

Showcase your feature on your website with a custom “As Featured in Vanguard” badge that links directly to your article!

Copy and paste this script into your page coding (ideally right before the closing tag) where you want to display our review banner.

Testimonials

It was a great honor to be featured in Vanguard Law. Working with every member of the team, from the initial interview with Erin Clark, through production with Victor Martins, writing the article with Taryn Plumb and creating the final content with Dave Gushee, was a true pleasure. Everyone was very professional, enthusiastic and supportive, and their creative approach and positive attitude clearly came through in the final product.
– Kevin C. Rakowski, Senior Vice President, Deputy General Counsel, Compliance with Radian Group Inc.
I was honored to be the subject of an article. I enjoy reading Vanguard articles and seeing how other attorneys got to their positions and see their jobs. It's also interesting to see how different law firms partner with the subjects of the articles.
– Henry Marquard, in-house counsel, Stanley Consultants Inc.
The piece highlighting my company, Bob Baker Enterprises, Inc., came out fabulous. Our company is in the new and used car sales and service industry. Everyone was great to work with and extremely professional. They produced a high-quality product and have provided expert assistance and guidance post-production of the article.
– Wade Poulson, General Counsel, Bob Baker Enterprises Inc.
As promised in advance, my feature in Vanguard has increased my visibility within the profession and prompted more than a few people I have not communicated with recently to reconnect. One of the Italian law firms I have used in the past is now in the process of interviewing me for an article on their website and tweeting out the feature story. Activity and the number of people connecting with me on LinkedIn has soared, which is great. The Vanguard writers and editorial staff were great to work with—highly professional and made the effort to make the experience both fun and rewarding (they were also respectful of the time pressures and demands all lawyers face). I was very pleased with the experience and the final outcome. Needless to say, I have been very pleased. All in all working with Vanguard has been a very positive experience which generated good publicity for both Shawcor and myself. My sincere thanks.
– Tim Hutzul, General Counsel, ShawCor Ltd.

LATEST EDITION

Fall II 2023

READ NOW

GET VANGUARD IN YOUR INBOX.

  • * We’ll never share your email or info with anyone.
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.