The Plant YYZ retails plant-based ready-made meals and ingredients they make themselves sustainably using local Ontario ingredients.

The brainchild of Melanie Bozzo, the operation makes over 150 of their own products at their Vaughan facility, everything up to and including items like sauces, condiments and fresh pasta with the main goal of creating a closed food system

In a row of renovated spaces that also includes Butternut Baking and Stag Head Barber, even the shop itself is Bullfrog Powered to be environmentally friendly.

Packaging is kept to glassware and compostable materials, transparency at the forefront with all ingredients listed clearly in bold black and white. Three minute episodes on their website go more in-depth about the nature of the products and business.

Grab and go, heat and serve options take less than five minutes to warm up, some using a proprietary steam technology only demanding you heat up the sauce and toss in the noodles, rendering fully cooked pasta in less than a minute.

Sauces tend to ring in under $10, with options like pizza sauce, Indian-style butter sauce, mushroom bolognese and pesto.

Soup-like items such as pasta e faggioli and veggie chili are around the same price.

Kombucha from Alchemy is available on tap for takeaway in refillable growlers in sour and punchy but fruity flavours like pear nettle chamomile and wild blueberry mint.

Bozzo’s legacy is actually the fresh pasta making business, her family having worked out of a facility in Hamilton for decades. She’s brought that experience to her plant-based business, offering items like beet bucatini ($7.50), mac & cheese ($12.75), and kale grilled veggie lasagna.

She also has a background in fashion, and retails recycled cotton merch made in Ontario to rep the store. Aprons go for $30, larger totes for $25 and smaller ones for $20, oven mitts for $10.

Like the kombucha, there are a few products are not made by The Plant YYZ, but which still bring together the idea of the closed local loop. Basd body products like mint body wash ($22.50), lotion ($36) and coffee body scrub ($28) are also plant-based with zero toxins.

Waterford company Pristine Gourmet provides sunflower oil, and Essence of Niagara makes preservative-free wine vinegars using all natural ingredients.

Ontario company Yoso creates vegan products free of dairy, casein and gluten like creamy cultured almond and cashew or coconut in classic flavours like strawberry, vanilla and chocolate ($5).

There are even books like Fuss-Free Vegan, My New Roots, Oh She Glows Everyday, The Greenhouse Cookbook and The New Farm so you can further educate yourself on plant-based foods.

On Sundays some products are half off, while baskets, catering and delivery drop-off in the works.