‘Food hub’ to spice up waterfront
Public market will provide unique space for emerging entrepreneurs
The creator of Hawkers Market, a popular Vancouver food and dining business incubator, has teamed up with Concert Properties to create a 50,000-squarefoot food hub on North Vancouver’s waterfront.
Set to open early next year, Hawkers Wharf will be a public market housing roughly 25 local, independent food start-ups at a cluster of converted shipping containers on the westernmost lot of four owned by Concert Properties along Harbourside Drive, just south of the Northshore Auto Mall.
The hub will also include a 6,000-sq.-ft production kitchen available to another 15 to 20 food entrepreneurs this fall, who need a home base to make their products, said Chris Jerome, the founder and director of Hawkers Market.
He said the market is modular in design and would remain at the site for at least six years, operating on a temporary-use permit. The project aims to give emerging food entrepreneurs the chance to turn their businesses into something more permanent, while generating interest in the early stages of a fourphase master-planned community in the works there by Concert Properties.
“There is very few other places in Vancouver where you can find 50,000-square-feet of waterfront property and then construct a full-scale food hub on it,” Jerome said in an interview last week.
Jerome launched Hawkers Market in 2012, arranging markets and festivals in various locations around Vancouver with a focus on new chefs and culturally diverse local food and beverages. They have since expanded to Calgary and Edmonton.
“A few years ago, with food, nothing like that really existed in Vancouver,” he said. “A lot of these businesses have started with us and then have been able to flourish and take off and become quite a bit larger, and opened brick-and-mortar shops or food trucks.”
Hawkers Wharf would take the incubator concept to another level, giving emerging food and beverage entrepreneurs a longterm location to expand their dining and retail services.
Harbourside is a four-stage master-planned community with a 15-year build-out vision across 12 acres, said Lisa Lock, vice-president of development for Concert Properties.
Lock said they are hoping to get their development permit approved by early next year for phase one, which would include five buildings, including a residential component and 45,000 sq. ft of retail space.
She said a staff member brought the idea of Hawkers to them after visiting one of Jerome’s markets. “(Jerome) went to the site and came back and said, ‘I have a great idea’. He pitched this to us.”
The market concept suited their vision for creating a bustling commercial hub before the condo towers started to go up, Lock said, pointing to Granville Island as an example.
“How does Granville Island work? It’s residential, there’s industry, there’s commercial food areas, there’s learning institutions, there’s cars and people all over the place.”
Many Vancouverites want to buy their food directly from the producer, she said. “The (Hawkers businesses) are authentic. It’s about the food. It’s about the passion. It’s about the product. It’s less about the space.”
Lock said Hawkers Wharf would eventually be folded into a permanent location at Harbourside, and the chefs and businesses that set up in the temporary market could secure leases. “Hawkers is the essence of what the new Harbourside is going to be,” she said. “Sort of like a sneak peek of what is going to come.”
To create a unique space, “you have to go out on a bit of limb”, she said. “You don’t create a place with a bunch of condo buildings — that’s not placemaking. It has to be interesting. People need to be drawn to the space.”
Retail is too often an afterthought by developers, she said. “You also just end up getting people who can pay big money.”
Jerome said the food business is often too expensive for most entrepreneurs even if they have a great idea or product. “Most food entrepreneurs don’t have the capital available to start a project and fit out a kitchen themselves,” he said.
“I’ve always seen a gap in the market here where we noticed that if we had enough infrastructure, we would be able to support the industry a lot more,” he said. “They’re missing support and feedback and coaching. They’re missing that community of people, and spaces that they can create a restaurant in or a food business in.”
He said the food hub concept could be expanded and taken to other developments around the region.
“We can actually move this and the entire food hub to another site,” he said. But he added: “I think we will see the transition of a lot of these businesses into Harbourside and into North Vancouver.”
“They’re missing support and feedback and coaching. They’re missing that community of people, and spaces that they can create a restaurant in or a food business in.
CHRIS JEROME HAWKERS MARKET FOUNDER