A retail storefront and a grocery store with walk-in refrigeration are both, technically, “retail” businesses. They are not, in practice, remotely similar when it comes to electricity or natural gas use.
One draws a fairly consistent load tied to store hours and lighting. The other runs refrigeration continuously, seven days a week, regardless of whether the doors are open. A default utility rate doesn’t distinguish between the two, because it isn’t designed to.
That gap becomes even more pronounced across a multi-location operation, where store formats, building ages, and regional utility territories can all vary from one location to the next. A flat energy rate applied uniformly across a chain overlooks all of that variation by design.
What “beyond the utility” means
Ontario retailers are not required to stay on their utility’s default rate. They can instead work with a licensed energy retailer to structure a contract around their specific operation. That’s a meaningfully different starting point than accepting whatever electricity or natural gas rate structure applies to the broadest possible set of commercial customers.
That option exists today for any Ontario retailer, regardless of size, and can be investigated at any point without waiting for a specific date on the calendar. A store owner can start the conversation whenever it makes sense to.
Retail and grocery, treated as its own category
Retail and grocery are one of six core industries Ontario Wholesale Energy (OWE) serves, alongside restaurants, manufacturing, farms and agriculture, automotive, and property management. As a boutique energy retailer, OWE builds electricity and natural gas contracts that align with how a specific store or grocery operation runs, whether that means accounting for continuous refrigeration, extended holiday-season hours, or a multi-location footprint.
The Retail Council of Canada has highlighted operational cost management as an ongoing consideration for members across the sector, and energy structuring is one part of that broader conversation.
That distinction, between retail as a broad category and retail as a set of genuinely different business types, is the reason this approach exists at all.
Multi-location retailers face this at scale
A single-location boutique retailer and a five-location grocery chain both fall under the same broad category, but their energy needs diverge quickly once actual operations are considered. Different stores may have different refrigeration loads, different building ages, and different seasonal traffic patterns, particularly around the holidays.
A contract built for a multi-location operation needs to account for that variation location by location, rather than applying a single average across an entire chain. That level of detail is difficult to achieve at mass-market scale, which is part of why a boutique structure matters here specifically.
Credibility that can be checked independently
OWE holds a current licence from the Ontario Energy Board and is backed by Shell Energy North America, with a track record across roughly 44,000 accounts. Retailers considering any energy contract should confirm licensing status directly through the OEB’s list of licensed electricity retailers before moving forward with any provider.
Seasonal retail has its own considerations too
Beyond grocery refrigeration, seasonal retailers face their own version of this problem. A store that does the bulk of its business between November and December has a very different annual energy pattern than one with steady traffic year-round, yet both are typically billed under the same flat commercial structure.
Accounting for that seasonality, rather than smoothing it into a single annual average, is part of what separates a contract built around the store from one built around the category it happens to fall into.
What retailers typically don’t know they’re missing
Most retail operators have never compared their current utility rate against a structure built specifically for their store, largely because no one has ever explained what that comparison would involve. The default rate simply arrives on the bill each month, and without a specific reason to question it, most owners don’t.
That’s less a reflection of retailers not caring about their operating costs, and more a reflection of how little visibility exists into what a custom-built alternative could look like. Bringing that visibility forward is a large part of what this conversation is meant to do.
The starting point
For most Ontario retailers, this begins with a conversation about how the store, or the chain, operates, not a standard proposal built for the average commercial account.
Whether that’s a single storefront or several locations across the province, the process starts the same way: with a look at how the business runs before anything gets proposed.
There’s no obligation created by having that first conversation, and no requirement to make any changes on the spot. It’s simply an opportunity to see what a custom structure would look like against the store’s current arrangement.
Contact an Energy Advisor today to see if a custom contract could help your business.
