Outlet trucking in food during airport rebuild
The food truck craze has hit Kelowna International Airport. However, it’s only for three months. The White Spot Triple O’s On-the-Go food truck is temporarily parked outside the main terminal entrance to provide service while the White Spot kitchen inside the airport is being rebuilt.
Passengers can order directly at the truck window or have table service by ordering at one of the White Spot restaurants in YLW.
Food for the restaurants will be prepared in the truck and delivered to tables.
The one in the departures lounge is the only post-security location in the entire network of 64 White Spots in B.C. and Alberta and 62 Triple O’s in B.C., Alberta and Asia.
White Spot also has pre-security locations at Vancouver and Victoria airports.
“We love our relationship with Kelowna airport,” said White Spot CEO Warren Erhart, who came up from the company’s head office in Vancouver to Kelowna for Thursday’s event at the food truck.
“That’s why we wanted to make sure passengers continued to get their White Spot while we’re redoing the kitchen.”
The work around with the food truck means a limited menu and fewer seats in the terminal. The 100 seats in the pre-security restaurant are all open.
However, post-security in the departures lounge, the 150-seat restaurant has been reduced to 50 during renovations.
Those 50 are the so-called patio seats in the railed-off section that juts out of the regular restaurant into the departure lounge.
Along with the kitchen, the 100-seat main part of the restaurant is being renovated.
When the new kitchen comes onstream, it will serve both the pre-security and postsecurity restaurants, as it did before.
However, it will be with a streamlined menu designed for quicker service.
White Spot is donating $2 from every burger order from the food truck to the Canucks Autism Network.
Airport operations manager Phillip Elchitz took the opportunity of the food truck event to update media on the YLW’s master plan.
Extensive renovations and expansions have just been completed in the departures lounge with the addition of Tim Hortons and Subway, more seating and two more departure gates to take the number to 10.
In the terminal, there’s more check-in counters and offices, a bigger and better luggage-handling system and centralized over-sized baggage station.
The airport serves 1.9 million passengers a year who fly in and out on 65 flights a day to 15 destinations in Canada, the U.S., Mexico and Cuba on nine airlines.
Annual growth is about eight per cent, which means there are plans to put in three more departure gates, expand the arrivals and departures areas, add more food and beverage options and more parking stalls.
“Our goal is to be the best mid-sized airport in North America,” said Elchitz.
Currently, Kelowna ranks in the top third of 68 airports based on quarterly customer satisfaction surveys done by Airport Council International of facilities serving under two million passengers a year.
Portland, Maine’s airport is No. 1.