Hungry Guys Kitchen is a fast casual restaurant conveniently located on bustling Granville Street in Downtown Vancouver. The name is a tribute to our mother who would ask us as soon as we stepped in the door “ Are you hungry, guys?” We’re open for lunch and dinner, serving burritos, bowls and salads in an easy-going urban casual vibe. Come in if you want good food fast, but stay a while too since we have cool music and wi-fi. Owner Aldo Velaj learned how to cook with his mother, started cooking at the age of 15, worked at different restaurants over the years, and finally creating Hungry Guys Kitchen. Our goal is to serve the public food that they would serve themselves and their family members. Tasty, healthy, fresh, belly filling but not busting, put a smile on your face food.
Question: How are you supporting other local businesses?
Answer: We strive to source and use only local whenever humanly possible! This City has been good to me, so I like to do my part to support local businesses. We support other local businesses whenever we can, and our goal is to keep as much money from our business in B.C. as possible. About 35% of our total inventory spending is local ingredients (meat and seasonal vegetables) or products from local distributors (Fresh Point, Bosa Foods, Horizon, Waterman’s, Intercontinental Flavours Group). We buy our sodas from a local distributor, and get craft beer from Phillips (Victoria).
For all our service purchases, almost all the companies we do business with are 100% B.C.-based, and more specifically Vancouver-based. Our point of sale system is from Vivonet, who launched in Vancouver but were just purchased by Infor. Our accounting is with a local company Manning Elliott, our repair and maintenance is a small local company, and when we’ve done advertising, we used the local paper. I did the restaurant design myself, but we sourced local construction materials from Sen Western Lumber, and hired local contractors.
Question: What social and environmental practices are you proud of?
Answer: Besides supporting local vendors, we want to add to Granville Street and Vancouver, so we keep our business and the sidewalk area out front impeccably clean.
We donate to local causes. We get approached by small causes and charities, and we provide them with gift certificates, and we also support some local events. We also support local artists! We purchased all the art in the restaurant from local artists.
Of course we recycle and compost everything we can out of the kitchen. We’ve used compostable take out materials since we opened in 2015. I believe in the power of consumers to make positive change, and hope that we can all do our part to reduce plastics and other waste by making better purchasing decisions.
