Tyler Knight – Opening Refillery District

How has your new business, Refillery District, been received?

It has been so well-received. When we first opened our doors it was like a floodgate had opened of people waiting for something like this to come. It’s been in Europe for a long time, but when we opened we were actually one of four in Canada, so it was a very new concept.

With the media talking about what we need to do to curb our plastic use, it was something that people saw the need for. Since opening our doors at Refillery we’ve noticed a lot of different people coming in. We thought we knew what our market was going to be and it’s very much surprised us as to who those people are.

We have people from all walks of life coming into our store and people we never thought would be the type of people going through that effort to cut out their single-use plastics. They come in once and they get one item, second time they’re getting three items, and by the time they come back again they’re doing full shops here.

It’s pretty special that they’ve chosen to make our store their local place.