A location-aware grocery store for Canada's remote north

Sysco Canada sold groceries direct to households through Sysco@HOME, run as 15 separate Shopify storefronts, one per city. Each had its own homepage, menus and collections to manage. Sysco hired DYODE to merge them into one store that knows where each shopper is.

Partway through, the plan changed. Sysco pointed the same location engine at a new store, Sysco North, which serves remote First Nations and northern communities. Each location carries different stock, and Sysco's back end needs to know which community inside a location every order comes from.

We cloned an existing Sysco@HOME store as the base and kept its theme, so the budget went into the location logic rather than a redesign. Sysco's team kept ownership of products, collections, taxes and delivery settings; we built the storefront code and wrote the setup guides they would need to run it.

We launched with a single location first, then added the pieces Sysco asked for in later phases: sub-community tracking and location filtering for search.

On a first visit, a location picker asks shoppers to choose their community before they browse, and the store remembers the choice on return. The header always shows where you are shopping. Switching locations clears the cart, and the store asks first.

Each location gets its own homepage, its own Shopify menu and its own set of collections, so shoppers only see what their location stocks. Shoppers also pick their sub-community, which is saved to the cart and passed to the order, so Sysco's systems receive it with every order.

Adding a location needs no developer. Sysco's team adds a block in the theme editor with the location name, store code and its list of sub-communities.

Sysco North runs on the store DYODE built. The location picker, sub-community selection and location-scoped menus and collections are all still live at sysconorth.ca.

The store launched with one location and now lists several across the north, added from the theme editor rather than in code. Shoppers order online or by phone, and Sysco delivers each order to the community airport for pickup.