A Place at the Table: How the Kitchen Came To Be

A love letter:

This is one of those Oscar Awards moments, when someone overstays their welcome at the microphone, thanking a list of people that never ends. Well, just pretend the music is starting to play to get me off the microphone, but it’s worth staying to listen, because you’re probably in this gratitude speech.

Or someone you work with. Or one of the other parents from the school. Or your neighbour. Thank you all. For helping, caring, reading, teaching, funding, building, and creating it and within it.

– Casandra, Executive Director

Tallying the bumps:

We’ve spent years supporting elders to share their knowledge and skills. It was at a workshop in 2022, when we noticed two elders not actively participating because they couldn’t stand at the tall counters, and couldn’t see when they sat down on their walkers.

The elders also often said they didn’t enjoy the stark steel of industrial kitchens, and wanted to teach somewhere that felt more like home; that could rebuild the village spaces and connections they remembered.

We love teaching and working in community kitchens all over the Coast. But we were loading up vehicles driving equipment and food up and down the Coast, hosting workshops and gatherings, loading everything back up again, hauling it all back to our food hub, and unloading it yet again into our storage spaces. The logistics were crippling us.

Just some ideas

The idea was planted for a hub or a “lab” kitchen that would be:

• an incubator for ideas, a stepping stone to larger production facilities and commissaries for launching or scaling food businesses
• a hub for food waste projects to get food into bellies that need it (and make creative and delicious things along the way)
• a school of food traditions and skills from all cultures and generations
• a space for events as a part of the Tiny Farm, including pop-ups by local chefs testing new menus

Along the way, it also needed:

• to have weird equipment to get creative, like grain mills, tin canning machines, freeze dryers, and all sorts of canners and steam juicers.
• bright lighting for work but also moody, warm lighting for conversations and sharing meals.
• commercial-grade equipment, but also cozy and colourful and couldn’t “feel” like a commercial kitchen.
• to be available for days or weeks at a time for a particular project to really percolate,
• worktops on wheels to move around for different uses, and on hydraulics so that they could go up for tall people, and down for kids and folks that need to sit. At the same time.

Oh dear. The demands were high.

Building a solution:

In 2022, Casandra Fletcher began pulling together local chefs, teachers, disability advocates, elders, and small food business startups, and together, we dreamed, planned, and sourced partners. This involved Megan Dewar (disability advocate & community builder), Jack Chen (pro chef, entrepreneur), Kwa’tle’maht HollyAnn (shíshálh nation elder, teacher), Jody Horne (pro chef, event host, restaurant owner), Anthony Santi (pro chef, entrepreneur), Andrea Potter (foods teacher, School District 46), Caitlin Allenby (teacher & chef), Andi Bothma (commissary manager, small business support), Kate McLaughlin (finance, entrepreneur), Xwa’pa’lich Barb Higgins (shíshálh nation elder, teacher), Lisa Giroday (entrepeneur), Karen Spicer (Community Association board).

Lucky for us, some amazing funders and local businesses believed in us and wanted to invest in you and our community. The dream team of Casandra, Caitlin Allenby, Lisa Giroday, and Jack Chen worked with over a dozen local businesses and funders to create a space that was accessible, functional, and didn’t *feel* like an industrial kitchen.

We buttoned this 2-year project up in 2024.   < read more >

Making a Plan

You heard it all, shared your ideas and what would make it useful to you, and then you came out in droves to support it, in whatever way you could. We got feedback from dozens of people – members, people wandering the gardens and attending workshops, people on social media, but in particular, this crew of people helped guide this plan:

• Megan Dewar (disability advocate & community builder)
• Jack Chen (pro chef, entrepreneur)
• Kwa’tle’maht HollyAnn (shishalh nation elder, teacher)
• Jodi Horne (pro chef, event host, restaurant owner)
• Anthony Santi (pro chef, entrepreneur)
• Andrea Potter (foods & nutrition teacher, School District 46)
• Caitlin Allenby (teacher & chef)
• Andi Bothma (commissary manager, small business support)
• Kate McLaughlin (finance, entrepreneur)
• Xwa’pa’lich Barb Higgins (shishalh nation elder, teacher)
• Lisa Giroday (entrepreneur)
• Karen Spicer (Community Association board, community kitchen builder)

Doodles were made, and we enlisted the help of Monte Staats to finalize drawings for Dale Allenback at Sunco Engineering.

Funding it

This was NOT going to be cheap. Commercial grade equipment, three different engineer certifications, brand new septic field with capacity for food service for 100 people a night, excavation services, new electrical service, and the building itself? The budget made us weak in the knees.

The first to step up and take a chance on this big/little idea was ICE-T – Island Coastal Economic Trust –

And our local community builders, who donated skills, equipment, and time:

Building it

We enlisted the Red Seal Carpentry program at a high school in Surrey, and so the shell was built by a bunch of 16 and 17-year old students. Our dear friend, Lonnie, from Lon’s Crane, dropped it onsite (donating his services 100%).

Today, we’re sitting here in this cozy warm kitchen, full of high end equipment that can do magical things to support food resiliency, connections, learning, and economic prosperity, and we’re trying to count exactly how many projects and people have been through here this year since it opened. We’re sitting at around 130 different people who have actively used the space to work on projects, and a couple hundred more who have wandered through open houses, and attended group get-togethers here.

I want to share my goosebumps with you. It makes me a bit lumpy-throated turning on the lights to see racks full of canned quince jellies made yesterday out of fruit that would have dropped and rotted. I glow when elders walk in to a commercial kitchen, and instead of being offended by all the stainless steel, they ooh and aah over the warm colours, plants, and wood.

seeing the plans of little businesses starting out and experimenting with recipes and classes in here.

Thank you. I mean, this place is for YOU, so I guess we’re all winners here.

Casandra
Executive Director