How Edward Lalonde turned a kitchen-counter experiment into a fast-growing protein brand
While working as a personal trainer back in 2012, Montreal-based Edward Lalonde was also selling nutritional supplements and protein powders but found the options for protein powders were gritty and tasted terrible. So, Lalonde started thinking about developing his own shake formulation. In 2014, he transitioned to a jon as a senior product manager for a ready-to-eat meal delivery company; but it wasn’t until three years later that Lalonde actively started developing a vegan protein shake recipe. He noticed growing interest in plant-based proteins and saw an opportunity in the market to create a better tasting shake.
Most plant-based protein powders are made from pea protein. So, Lalonde’s first task was to find the best pea protein out there. “I must have tried 300 different pea protein samples from North America, Canada, the States, Europe, China,” he explains. “It was all trial and error to find the one with the most neutral flavour and the best, smooth texture.” The same went for all the other ingredients in his shake, from prebiotic fibre to coconut milk powder and stevia. “Everything was from very humble beginnings, starting off with a small scale on my kitchen counter, scaling and weighing ingredients.”
It was a part-time venture alongside his full-time venture alongside his full-time work as a senior product manager at a meal delivery company - it took him two years to develop his base recipe and four flavours for the official launch of Good Protein’s All-in-One Shake in 2019: Chocolate, Vanilla, Açai Berry and Tropical Fruit. That’s also when he quit his full-time job to go all-in on his new venture.
Lalonde focused on direct-to-consumer e-commerce to start. It was a one-man show for the first three years as he worked to get his business off the ground. “It was just me packing all the orders, doing customer service and the purchasing,” says Lalonde. “I was working 80 to 100 hours a week. It was rough, for sure.” He was packing orders in his Montreal apartment and took over his parents’ garage, bringing orders individually to Canada Post to ship them.
The long days paid off. In 2022, Lalonde leaned heavily into digital marketing, such as Google and Facebook ads, and saw his business take off. That led to his first major buyer reaching out from Costco. “They told us they saw our ad on Facebook, and we were everywhere on their feed,” Lalonde explains. But, knowing he was still in the early stages of the business, he didn’t feel confident about his production capacity to fulfil that partnership. “I ended up deciding it wasn’t the right time,” he says, citing it as one of the hardest business decisions he had to make. Despite this, Lalonde saw the business grow 1,000% year-over-year between 2022 and 2023.
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By 2024, after he built up an internal team and partnered with a food broker, Lalonde felt ready to enter the retail market. The first retailer he worked with was Avril Supermarché Santé, a natural food grocer in Quebec, where he launched in November 2024. “They’re still one of our best retailers today,” Lalonde explains. Then, the retail deals kept on coming.
First, there were a few hundred Bulk Barn stores nationally in March 2024. Then, once Costco heard Good Protein was ready for distribution, the retailer called Lalonde again, and this time he was ready. In April 2025, his products launched in 70 Costco warehouses across the country and sold out after seven weeks. Next up was IGA and Sobeys, which sold Good Protein in 300 stores nationally as of May 2025. A launch at a yet-to-be-announced major retailer is planning for the fall of 2025. Currently, Good Protein products can be found in more than 2,500 stores across Canada, in addition to sales through Well.ca and Amazon, the latter of which accounts for up to 25% of the company’s sales.
Good Protein is no longer a one-man show. Lalonde now has a team of 50 full-time staff. “To this day, I still wear a lot of hats,” he explains. “But I learned how to delegate and really trust a lot of my key people.” He’ll be leaning on those people even more as he’s got big plans for the rest of 2025 and 2026. He just launched High Protein Plant-Based Shake with 32 grams of protein in French Vanilla and Chocolate Milk. Coming up, Lalonde plans to introduce single-serving travel packs, based on consumer demand. And lastly, he’s hoping to expand outside of Canada and start selling internationally soon, too.
Looking back, Lalonde feels proud of what he’s built and accomplished. He took a risk in starting the business, but if you ask him, there was no other option except to succeed.
For me, there was no Plan B,” he says. “I didn’t have anything to fall back on. I didn’t have a choice. I had to make it happen, and that’s what motivated me.”
