3 Reasons to Avoid Shipping Food to Canada on Faire.com

Faire is a great platform for wholesalers to showcase their products on, as many retailers use it as a way to discover new products. When selling your products on Faire.com, you can select the option to sell to Canada. This may seem like an easy way to get your products launched into Canada, but there are several drawbacks when it comes to using Faire to ship to Canada.

1. Faire.com doesn’t have an Importers License

By law, in order to ship products into Canada for resale, someone must be listed as the importer. In Canada, importers possess an importer’s number that must be renewed every two years.

If you are shipping food into Canada for resale, you are also required to have Safe Foods for Canadians Importer’s license. Even if the product is made in USA under food safety laws. 

Faire explicitly states that the retailer will be listed as the importer of the goods, but if the retailer doesn’t have an importer’s license that is compliant with the Safe Foods for Canadian’s Act, your shipment will not make it through customs. 

Many Canadian retailers are not aware of importing laws, and might place an order on Faire.com for goods that they cannot legally import. This situation impacts everyone negatively, as it can sour new B2B relationships before they even have a chance to get started.

2. Zero Support for Canadian Compliance

Faire.com does not provide any support for meeting the Canadian compliance regulations when it comes to packaging standards for food sales.

When importing your food into Canada you need to have your labels updated to meet the requirements of Canada. This includes using a Canadian nutrition facts label (which is different from the US one), ingredients listed in French and English (and also listed differently), additional declarations of allergens, and several other packaging requirements (to learn more about the necessary packaging requirements for selling in Canada, read this). If you do not have the correct packaging, your product might be turned away at Customs, or worse, if it makes it through, it might get flagged by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) resulting in a fine. 

Additionally, some ingredients are not legal for import into Canada. Ingredients including monk fruit sweetener, allulose, CBD, and hemp are banned from being imported to Canada.

When selling your food on Faire.com to Canada, there is no support for navigating the packaging compliance or legal formulations.

3. Shipping to Canada with Faire.com is Expensive

Shipping anything to Canada is expensive. Faire.com does not utilize any of the available options to reduce those costs such as contacted lower rates for customs broker, Canadian based fulliment options, or volume discounts. When shipping to Canada with Faire.com, they are really only giving you a shipping label, but you will need the following also to ship:

• Find & pay for a customs broker to clear the product through the border
• Certificate of Origin Documentation
• Food Safety Documentation of Manufacturing & Storage that meets Canadian requirements
• Packaging that meets Canadian compliance

Should you Ship to Canada on Faire.com?

Faire.com is a great tool for Canadian retailers to find out about your brand. Before deciding to ship your product into Canada using Faire.com, make sure you are ready by:

• Determine if your food product is legally able to be imported into Canada
• Update your packaging to meet Canadian Compliance
• Get your Certificate of Origin completed
• Gather your food safety documentation, including any audits

Once you have completed those tasks, you can feel confident about turning on the ability to ship and sell to Canadian retailers on Faire.com. Just make sure to double check that your customers have a Safe Food for Canadians importer’s license before you ship!