Image Credit: CFJC Today

By Adam Donnelly

HUNGRY FOR OPTIONS?

Food Hall and Commissary Kitchen proposed for North Shore development

Feb 11, 2020 | 5:23 PM

KAMLOOPS — Many citizens of Kamloops are quite aware of the thriving culinary culture that exists in the city. Events like Farm2Chefs, Chefs in the City and even Ribfest are all centered around food, and they all draw huge crowds of hungry people. Now, there’s a plan to create a space on the North Shore for a facility that could expand the burgeoning food scene in that area. The idea could also build capacity for local producers to process more of their own food.

People of Kamloops have been known to travel far and wide throughout the city for their favourite food truck fare. However, when winter comes and the crowds disperse, most operators make like bears and hibernate. Thanks to a new proposal, there may be an opportunity for these small food service providers to operate year ‘round.

“Food trucks have been successful in a lot of other cities. We continue to have regulatory challenges with them here. Really, we’re just creating an indoor food truck space,” Mitchell Forgie, one of the men behind the proposed food hall, told CFJC Today.

The idea stemmed from a conversation between Forgie, who owns Red Beard, and Joshua Knaak. The pair were chatting about how citizens of the neighbourhood could utilize the space at Spirit Square. Knaak and his development company, ARPA Investments, are now halfway through the construction of a pair of buildings at the location. With the first building close to opening, construction crews will switch their focus to the second building, where the new facility is being proposed.

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“We connected with the Food Policy Council this year. They’re working on a project called The Food Hub, where they’re looking at a commissary kitchen which is a shared commercial kitchen that food producers could get licensing to make products that they could then sell on to grocery stores,” Forgie explained. “We felt that these two concepts were quite symbiotic.”

Bonnie Klohn is the Food Hub Lead for the Kamloops Food Policy Council. The Food Hub name of the commissary kitchen project the council has been working on for the past several months.

“What we’re really hoping to do is have a place where food entrepreneurs — people who are processing food, people who are caterers, farmers who want to do value-added — can come and they can rent space in a fairly low barrier way,” Kohn explained.

Some have described the space as similar to Pike Place or Granville Island Markets. Forgie is cautious when making those kinds of comparisons.

“You’ve got to remember, Granville Island did not start as 25 buildings deployed across this huge area,” Forgie said. “It started as a couple of shops that realized, ‘If we work together, we can be more competitive than we are individually.’”

For Klohn and the Food Policy Council, the goal is to offer a space where local food folks can use local produce to produce local products.

“We really hope that we can put the infrastructure in place for more food that is grown locally to be eaten locally,” Klohn said. “And we hope that it will create a ‘Made-in-Kamloops’ feel.”