The ice cream truck is back
Mike and Christine Burke have brought the old-fashioned ice cream truck back to Kelowna with Caveman Ice Cream & Treats. “We bought the truck used from a guy in Kelowna who, by the end, was only going out to about three events a year,” said Mike.
“We’ll be going to a lot more events and when we don’t have an event we’ll be at the Kangaroo Farm (in Lake Country) every day.”
The ice cream truck has already popped up at Rutland May Days and will be at Kelowna’s Canada Day celebrations and Downtown Kelowna’s Block Party on July 21.
“We wanted a unique character or animal we could use in our logo and my wife came up with a caveman and it stuck,” said Mike.
So, the business mascot is a prehistoric, knuckle-dragging dude wearing a loincloth and big grin with a giant ice cream cone slung over his shoulder instead of a club.
Caveman sells eight flavours of hard ice cream from West Kelowna’s Foothills Dairy – classic vanilla, maple nut, All-Canadian Moose, bubble gum, birthday cake and cookies and cream.
Also on the frozen menu are Mini Melts, those little ice cream pellets that have to be stored at -40C.
They come in five incarnations – cotton candy, cookies and cream, cookie dough, banana split and mint chocolate.
To amp up the sugar there’s also cotton candy and cold drinks.
Kelowna-made Queen B Kettle Corn, in white cheddar and sweet and salty flavours, will also be available at the truck.
Craft Beer Market opening June 28
The opening date of the long-anticipated Craft Beer Market in downtown Kelowna has been revealed. It’s Thursday, June 28. It took a couple of years for Craft to sort everything out to take over the former Paramount movie theatre on Bernard Avenue and then five months of construction to retrofit the space as a pub and restaurant.
The huge, vertical, neon Paramount sign is still pride of place on the exterior of the building.
While Craft wasn’t able to salvage any of the original Parmount chairs, it did find some vintage theatre seats in Europe that are now in the lobby.
There’s a high-ceiling indoor restaurant and rooftop patio overlooking Okanagan Lake with seating for 200.
The rooftop is expected to be the place to see and be seen this summer. There are also shuffleboard courts up there. True to its name, Craft will have the Okanagan’s largest selection of draft beer with 100 on tap, many of them artisan brews with a focus on B.C. brands.
The centre island bar has steel draft towers connecting the bar to the beers in the keg room.
The custom-built keg room, with over 300 kegs, is a glass-enclosed showpiece.
While beer is naturally the focus, there will also be a good selection of wines, spirits, cocktails and non-alcoholic options.
Craft may look and feel like a pub, but it’s a family-friendly casual restaurant with a menu that far exceeds basic pub food.
As such, the fresh and sophisticated twist on traditional comfort foods covers everything from salads, pizzas and pastas to sandwiches, roast chicken and grilled salmon.
“I grew up spending every summer in the Okanagan and this is really my second home,” said Calgary-based Craft president and founder PJ L’Heureux.
“I feel very fortunate to open a business here and for my kids to be able to experience all the things I love about the area.” The first Craft opened in Calgary in 2011. Since then it’s spread to four other locations – Vancouver, Edmonton, Toronto and Ottawa.
Softening real estate
In a perplexing parallel, home sales in Kelowna are down, but prices are up.
In May, in Kelowna, 504 homes of all kinds (single-family, townhouse and condominiums) changed hands, a 31 per cent plunge from the 731 sales in May 2017.
Meantime, the average selling price of a single-family Christine and Mike Burke own and operate Caveman Ice Cream & Treats, an old-fashioned ice cream truck that will be stationed most days at the Kangaroo Farm in Lake Country. Craft Beer Market is almost ready to open in downtown Kelowna. The restaurant also has a rooftop patio overlooking Okanagan Lake that seats 200. home remains at a record level of $723,000.
Okanagan Mainline Real Estate Board president Marv Beer explains the sales slump as a natural reaction to the heady market peak in 2016.
As well, the proposed provincial real estate speculation tax and tougher mortgage rules is scaring off and ruling out some potential buyers.
Beer said high prices are caused by a shortage of housing for sale and housing in general.
“When demand for housing increases, home builders typically respond by building new homes,” he said.
“But, as we’ve seen here and across B.C., prices increase when supply doesn’t ramp up fast enough, making homes less affordable in general.”
Top 10 for investment
MoneySense magazine ranks Kelowna one of Canada’s top 10 real estate investment markets.
Granted, Kelowna came in at No. 10, but it’s still quite an accolade.
One Water Street, the development that’s selling condos in what will become Kelowna’s two tallest buildings at 36 and 29 storeys, is using the ranking as a sales tool.
Condos are moving faster than expected with more than 340 worth $200 million sold.
The 36-storey East Tower is already under construction for 2021 completion and West Tower construction will start soon for a 2022 finish.
Numbers one to nine on the list are Brantford, Peterborough, Victoria, Guelph, Kingston, Abbotsford, Vancouver, Barrie and London.
Steve MacNaull is The Okanagan Weekend’s business and wine reporter and columnist. Reach him at steve.macnaull@ok.bc.ca.