FAQ
bare market FAQ
questions? we’ve got answers.
Shopping bare works a little differently than a traditional online store. Find answers about refills + deposits, bulk + case-sized food, packaging, Local Pickup, Local Delivery, Standard Shipping + ordering online.
How does bare market work now that the physical shop is closed?
bare market is now 100% online. Our physical shop closed in May 2024, but you can still shop body care, home care + DIY refills, bulk + case-sized food and 1000s of sustainable lifestyle products online.
Liquid refills arrive in deposit pouches or jars. Non-liquid refills generally arrive in paper bags. Use them straight from their packaging or decant them into your own containers at home.
Choose Local Pickup, Local Delivery or Standard Shipping based on where you live + how you'd like to receive your order.
Should I choose Local Pickup, Local Delivery or Standard Shipping?
Choose Local Pickup if one of our 4 pickup hubs is conveniently located for you. Pickup is always free and is also a great option for large or heavy orders.
Choose Local Delivery if you'd like your order delivered to your door in Toronto, Scarborough, Etobicoke, Mississauga, Oakville, Brampton, Vaughan, Richmond Hill, Markham, Milton, Hamilton, Burlington, Newmarket, Aurora, Pickering, Ajax, Whitby or Oshawa. Delivery is free or reduced-cost depending on your order total.
Choose Standard Shipping if you're outside our Local Delivery area or elsewhere in Canada and want your order sent through a shipping carrier.
If you qualify for a cheaper Local Delivery rate but accidentally pay for Standard Shipping, we'll refund the difference.
How do I select my delivery or pickup option on the cart page?
On the cart page, below the items in your cart, you'll see the three ways to receive your order.
Local Pickup: Select Local Pickup, then choose your preferred hub from the dropdown.
Local Delivery: Select Local Delivery, enter the first 3 characters of your postal code, then click Check to confirm that we deliver to your area + see your available rates.
Standard Shipping: Select Standard Shipping. No postal code check is needed on the cart page.
Important: After selecting an option, wait for the checkout button below to fully load + become darker before clicking it or testing another option.
Where are your pickup hubs?
We have four pickup hubs:
Mischief Makers – 247 Coxwell Avenue, Toronto
Ethical Local Market – 1628 Queen Street East, Toronto
North York – Bayview / York Mills
Whitby – Thickson / Taunton
The North York + Whitby hubs are residential homes, so we don't publish their exact addresses online. We'll send you the exact pickup address once your order has been dropped at the hub + is ready. Once we do, let us know roughly which day you plan to pick up so we can make sure your order is accessible outside if nobody is home.
We ask that orders be picked up reasonably promptly so our hubs don't have to store them indefinitely. If you need more time, just let us know.
How will I know when my order is ready, on the way or shipped?
Local Pickup: We'll email you once your order has actually been dropped at your selected hub. Wait for your Ready for Pickup email before heading over. If you don't see it, check your spam/junk folder first.
Local Delivery: If your order is travelling by courier, you'll receive email and/or text updates directly from the courier once the delivery is booked + on the way.
Standard Shipping: You'll receive tracking information from the shipping carrier when available.
Missing an update? Email baremarketasm@gmail.com.
How much does Local Delivery cost?
Durham
Under $35: $8
$35–$79.99: $2.99
$80+: FREE
Other Local Delivery areas
Under $40: $8
$40–$79.99: $3.99
$80+: FREE
Select Local Delivery on the cart page, enter the first 3 characters of your postal code + click Check to see your available rates.
How long will my order take?
Local Delivery: We aim for 2–7 days. Once packed, most Local Delivery orders can go by same-day or next-day courier.
Local Pickup: Orders go to our hubs on a scheduled weekday run, with a weekend run sometimes added based on order volume. Grouping orders together helps keep pickup free.
Standard Shipping: We generally drop shipments Monday, Wednesday + Friday. Transit is usually another 2–7 business days depending on destination.
If an item is temporarily out of stock, we may wait for incoming stock if it's expected soon. If it will meaningfully delay your order beyond a week, we'll contact you.
What if my Local Delivery order is very heavy?
Many of the couriers we use are best suited to a single box around 12 kg or less. If your order is heavier or doesn't fit safely into one box, we may split it, use another delivery option or deliver it ourselves.
This isn't an issue for Local Pickup, so pickup may be the simplest choice for very large or heavy orders.
How do deposit jars + pouches work?
Most refill pouches + jars have a mandatory $2 deposit added on the cart page.
Return your empty deposit containers for free at any pickup hub. If you're within our Local Delivery area, you can also request a paid home pickup.
Clean, empty, dry-ish + undamaged pouches or jars returned with their cap or lid receive the full $2 credit. Minor wear may receive partial credit.
Deposit credits are issued as a digital bare market gift card. Gift cards never expire.
Why is my deposit returned as a gift card instead of a payment refund?
When you pay the $2 deposit, payment-processing fees are deducted from that transaction, so bare market never actually receives the full $2. Those processing fees also aren’t returned to us if we later refund the deposit to your original payment method.
Even so, when you return your deposit packaging in the required condition, we give you the full $2 back in bare market credit. In other words, you receive 100% of the deposit value you originally paid, even though we don’t receive or recover 100% of that $2 ourselves.
Deposit credits are issued as a digital bare market gift card and never expire.
Are all container charges refundable deposits?
No. Some smaller reusable containers have a container charge rather than a refundable deposit. For example, some 60 mL containers have a $2.50 container charge + some 30 mL droppers have a $3.50 charge.
Keep these containers + refill them. Many of these products, including things like toothpaste + rosehip oil, are also available in larger refill sizes that arrive in deposit packaging, so you can use the larger refill to top up the original container at home.
How do I return deposits if I don't live near a pickup hub?
Email baremarketasm@gmail.com before mailing anything back. We'll help find the lowest-cost return option for your location.
We're also working on a simpler return-shipping system for customers farther from our hubs.
Why did you switch from glass jars to plastic pouches for many liquid refills?
Glass worked well when most refills travelled a short distance from our physical shop to a customer's home. Moving refills through an online delivery + shipping model changed the equation.
For context, an empty 1 L glass jar weighs about 480 g, compared with roughly 18 g for one of our 1 L plastic pouches. That's about 462 g less packaging weight, or 96% lighter, before the product is even added.
Glass also takes up more space, needs more protective packaging when couriered or shipped, costs more to transport + can break in transit. Pouches aren't plastic-free, but their much lower weight + smaller size reduce transportation impacts, packaging requirements + customer shipping costs.
That helps make reduced or free delivery possible + lets us offer refills to customers who live much farther from a refill shop.
Why are refill products sold in set sizes online?
When we had a physical shop, you could dispense any amount of any product you wanted.
Online shopping works differently. Each quantity needs to translate into something that can be purchased, priced, packed + fulfilled through an ecommerce system. Selling every refill by the individual g or mL would mean filling highly specific amounts like 347 g or 683 mL, which would take much longer to weigh, adjust + pack accurately than working with standardized sizes. That extra labour would make fulfillment slower + ultimately increase the cost of the product for customers.
There’s also a pricing issue: online checkout systems charge in cents, so very low prices per individual g or mL often have to be rounded up due to decimal limits on ecommerce backends. That can make the price per g or mL MUCH higher than it needs to be, especially on products with a low per g costs.
Set sizes let us pack orders efficiently + keep pricing lower. We often discount larger sizes, so the price per g or mL decreases as you buy more.
Do I need to bring or buy my own containers?
No. Liquid refills arrive in deposit pouches or jars. Non-liquid refills generally arrive in paper bags.
Use them as-is or decant into whatever clean container you already have. We also sell bottles + jars if you want something decorative or convenient, but you don't need to buy one.
Why don't you offer BYOC anymore?
In our physical shop, customers filled their own containers directly from the bulk system. We continued BYOC for more than a year after the shop closed.
The biggest challenge online wasn't filling containers. It was transporting, sorting + tracking individually labelled customer containers between our fulfillment location + multiple GTA pickup hubs.
Our deposit system keeps a reusable refill model while making pickup + delivery more practical, including for customers who live farther away.
Is using a courier for Local Delivery actually sustainable?
No delivery method is impact-free, but route-based couriers combine deliveries for many businesses + households. That's often more efficient than us driving across the GTA for only a few bare market orders.
We also prioritize lighter weight contianers and reduce total packaging volume wherever possible, combine products into fewer packages + reuse shipping materials.
How will my order be packaged?
Liquid refills arrive in deposit pouches or jars. Non-liquid refills generally arrive in paper bags. Liquid products that aren't refills generally arrive in glass, while other lifestyle products usually stay in their manufacturer packaging.
We combine multiples of the same refill into one package wherever possible. Dishwasher tabs are sold per tab, but 25 or 100 tabs can still go together in one paper bag. Multiple kilograms of the same powder can often share one bag too.
If an order containing glass is being couriered or shipped, we protect it with reused packing materials. Pickup orders don't need the same protective packaging.
Do you reuse shipping + packing materials?
Yes. In almost 10 years of bare market, we've never purchased shipping boxes or protective packing materials. We reuse boxes + packing materials from our own supplier deliveries and collect useful boxes from other local businesses.
For Local Delivery, we also often reuse donated sturdy grocery bags because they hold heavy orders well.
Your order may arrive in packaging that's already had another life. That's intentional.
What happens to the packaging your products arrive in?
Reuse starts before your order reaches us. Many of our refills arrive in reusable deposit containers that we return to our own suppliers to be cleaned + used again.
We also look for suppliers that minimize their own shipping materials or use paper, easily recyclable + lower-waste options. Boxes + protective materials that arrive here and can be reused are kept for outgoing orders.
Packaging that can't be returned or reused is recycled or otherwise handled based on the material + the options available to us.
Can I order bulk food?
Yes. Some foods are sold in smaller preset bulk quantities. We also offer full supplier case sizes for customers who can store, use or share larger amounts.
All case-sized foods are ordered from our suppliers as needed. Lead times range from 1–2 days to about 2 weeks depending on the supplier.
Case sizes are often 25%+ cheaper per kilogram than our smaller retail food sizes because they require very little portioning, repacking or handling.
Case-sized dry foods are available for Local Pickup + within our Local Delivery area. They're not included in standard Canada-wide shipping rates because of their size + weight. Email baremarketasm@gmail.com if you'd like us to look at shipping options.
Where do your products come from?
Canadian sourcing has always been a major priority for us. Around 70% of the brands we carry are Canadian, alongside a smaller mix of US + international brands where they fill a need we haven't found a strong Canadian option for.
Our refills come from manufacturers + bulk suppliers, with many arriving to us in large reusable or returnable formats before they're portioned into the size you order.
How do you decide what products to carry?
We look at performance, ingredients, price, supplier practices, packaging, where something is made + whether it offers a meaningful lower-waste alternative.
As bare market has shifted online, we're also narrowing the assortment: reducing slower-moving products + focusing more heavily on refills, Canadian options + products customers continue to come back for.
What happens if something in my order is missing, incorrect or mislabeled?
Email baremarketasm@gmail.com or call/text 647-668-1210 with your order number + what happened.
Include a photo if relevant. We'll investigate the order + work out the appropriate solution with you.
Do you have a loyalty program?
Yes. bare Loyalty lets you earn points + redeem rewards when you shop with us. See how the bare Loyalty Program works.
What payment methods do you accept?
Online orders can be paid by major credit card, Shop Pay + PayPal. E-transfer or another arrangement may also be available when needed.
We never see or store your full credit-card number. We can't access it through Shopify, PayPal, Square or any other payment system we use.
Having trouble paying? Email baremarketasm@gmail.com.
What should I do if the cart keeps reloading, checkout won't move forward or delivery isn't showing?
Stop testing delivery options for a moment + let the cart finish updating. Wait until the checkout button below has fully loaded + become darker before clicking it or testing another option.
If the problem continues, email baremarketasm@gmail.com with the first three characters of your postal code, the option you were testing + a screenshot if possible.
If you accidentally complete checkout with Standard Shipping when your address qualifies for cheaper Local Delivery, we'll refund the difference.
How do subscriptions work?
Subscriptions are currently available on selected high-volume, non-food bulk refill products. Available frequencies appear on the applicable product page.
You can manage your subscription through the subscription portal or through the link in the original email you received when you signed up. From there, you can pause, skip or cancel upcoming orders.
If you're having trouble accessing the portal or making a change, email baremarketasm@gmail.com.
What is your cancellation + refund policy?
Many refill + food products are measured or portioned after you order, so cancellation + return eligibility depends on the product + how far your order has progressed.
Review our Refund Policy, especially for food + bulk items.
If something has gone wrong with your order rather than you changing your mind, email baremarketasm@gmail.com + we'll review it with you.