Mangia E Bevi Ristorante offers a classic Italian-inspired menu in a warm and inviting ambience. It was born from the desire of owners Rob Parrott and Doug Grisdale, along with Antonio Sauro, to create a neighbourhood gathering place with superb Italian fare, old-world service and a casual, comfortable ambience. Our menu is traditional Italian fare with a West Coast touch while still maintaining the intricacies of Italian flavours.
Our philosophy is simple – the food must be good and it must be shared with large groups of people. We want our guests to feel like they are gathered around our family table. We believe that every customer should be treated like family, and are passionate about ensuring that all our clients feel at home.
Question: How are you supporting other local businesses?
Answer: A lot of of our suppliers are local businesses. We use some of the best local specialty suppliers like Bosa Foods, Continental Importers, and Deluxe Seafoods. About 60% of our purchases are from these small, B.C. based specialty food companies. Our customers expect Italian products, and so our wine list is mostly Italian, but the majority of our craft beer is from local companies.
Besides our menu, we use many local companies for the services we purchase. We use local companies for our accounting, legal, and recycling/waste management services, and all of our tradespeople for repair and maintenance (plumbing, electrical) are from West or North Vancouver. Our waste management is with Smithrite, we use BBS Pro for our dishwasher chemicals, and our equipment is serviced by a North Vancouver refrigeration company. When we need to purchase kitchen equipment and tableware supplies, we get them through B.C. and Canadian companies like Key Foods, Puddifoot, or Russell Hendrix. We don’t pay for a lot of advertising, but 8 or 10 times a year when we advertise special events, we support our local paper (the North Shore News).
Question: What social and environmental practices are you proud of?
Answer: We’re especially proud of our fundraising efforts for local organizations. We focus our fundraising on local schools and hospitals. We’ve been been touched by cancer in too many ways, so we focused much of our charitable giving on supporting the fight against cancer. Through our special events, we have raised over $370,000 to battle cancer at Lions Gate and BC Children’s Hospitals. We raise between $30,000 and $40,000 per year for the two hospitals, and from our sales we donate about $12,000 annually. There’s more information on these efforts on our BACIO page.
