Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts (PICA) owner Sue Singer spent $500,000 in the last few months to renovate the restaurant and bakery at the 15-year-old Granville Island cooking school that she plans to sell within the next two years.
That’s on top of ongoing investments to keep her eight kitchens in state-of-the-art condition for students.
The 62-year-old has been slipping into retirement during the past few years and now works half-time.
“When I’m 65 years old, I want to be able to be gone from here so I can do some travelling before they put me in a home,” Singer said.
Finding a buyer should be relatively easy given that her profitable venture has been increasing revenue thanks to a wider range of courses, more corporate events and higher tuition prices for her culinary school’s diploma program.
Singer hiked tuition by $500 to $14,575 last year for her culinary arts and baking and pastry arts programs because the curriculum was expanded to include a foundation-level Wine and Spirit Education Trust course and a food and beverage operations management course.
Only 190 of her school’s 216 culinary student spots are filled during the current summer semester, but she said the institute’s September, January and April intakes are usually at capacity.
Enrolment at the 30-employee culinary school has been flat the last few years and Singer believes her school will enjoy increased demand from students thanks to a recent federal government decision to give each foreign student who attends PICA an automatic work visa.
Previously, only public institutions such as Vancouver Community College were able to offer that perk to international students.
The full-time culinary programs makes up about 66% of Singer’s revenue.
The corporate side of her business, which includes team-building sessions and one-off courses on topics such as beer appreciation, generates about 30% of her revenue. Her bakery and restaurant provide the remaining 4%.
Wheat yards to provide oasis in urban food deserts
Fears that Vancouverites will not have secure access to food following a catastrophe have started to gain traction.
The day after Mayor Gregor Robertson championed a pilot project to allow residents to grow wheat on front lawns, the Vancouver Food Policy Council released a 200-page report that provides a snapshot of how ill-equipped Metro Vancouver is to supply itself with food were supply lines ever to be cut.
“[Wheat from Vancouver lawns] certainly isn’t going to feed many families. It’s a demonstration-type crop,” Robertson told media last week. “It’s more a symbol of food security.”
Vancouver Food Policy Council co-chairman Brent Mansfield agrees.
“There’s a lot of frailties and things that are scary within our food system which makes food vulnerable to sudden changes in prices,” he said.
“Because of just-in-time delivery services to grocers, bar codes and the way grocery stores operate, we probably have about a 72-hour supply of food on store shelves in Vancouver.”
Mansfield’s report urges tougher laws to protect agricultural land that sometimes doubles as ad-hoc garbage sites when people dump everything from old couches to construction materials. The report also identifies “food deserts” – neighbourhoods where residents are required to drive to get to a grocery store.
“Shaughnessy has one food store,” Mansfield said. “Grandview-Woodland has 63 food stores.”
Smaller jazz festival boosts hotel business
Employees at O’Doul’s Restaurant and Bar had to count heads to ensure they were not over their 200-person limit when Wynton Marsalis stopped by after his June 26 to perform a free jam session.
“We had to close doors and not let anyone else in. So we were at capacity if not over,” said the restaurant’s sommelier Calvin DesChene.
Sales were easily double that of a normal Sunday night.
DesChene estimated that sales during the Vancouver International Jazz Festival are usually double what the restaurant does during a normal week because it is a festival sponsor.
This year’s jazz festival, however, is about 100 concerts smaller than in past years.
Its 2011 budget was $3.4 million – 30% less than the $4.8 million budget the festival had in 2009, when its 10-day extravaganza showcased 1,800 musicians at 40 venues attracting more than 500,000 spectators.
The result for O’Doul’s was nights during the week that were sluggish given that it was during the jazz festival.
DesChene estimated that sales this year during Vancouver’s largest music festival are about 10% less than last year.
Cool spring likely to shrink B.C. wine production
Hot sunny days have descended on the Okanagan, but winemakers still fret that this year will likely yield a below-average grape bounty.
Business in Vancouver paid a visit to Road 13 winery + vineyards co-owner Pam Luckhurst in June when, under cloudy skies, her vineyard crew was pruning leaves in her vineyard.
“That will enable the grape bunches to get more sun,” Luckhurst explained.
Luckhurst said that if the region does not get a long and warm summer, her vineyard crews will likely have to cull grape bunches so the remaining grape bunches will be able to get enough nourishment to fully ripen. It’s similar to how she culls deadheads from a flower pot on the new outdoor patio of a 10,000-square-foot building that she and husband Mike Luckhurst spent about $3 million to build.
The structure houses their new eatery and tasting lounge, which are used mostly for privately booked wine tours where visitors are also able to nibble charcuterie, cheeses and breads.
The building also features a mechanical room and storage space. The Luckhursts spent $2 million in order to buy the former Golden Mile Cellars and 24 acres of land in 2003. They rechristened their venture Road 13 and have since bought an additional 22 acres of land. Production has increased from 1,000 cases in their first year to what was originally anticipated to be about 20,000 this year.
The Luckhursts say that their new storage space will soon enable them to produce 25,000 cases in a year.