The Workshop Vegetarian Cafe is a group of chefs, artisans, bakers, nutritionists, educators, personal trainers, and outdoor enthusiasts. It’s a family-run business, with many recipes coming from the family. They source the highest quality, organic, local, and natural ingredients they can find and are passionate about bringing their customers plant-based and vegan meals that are easy to prepare and rich with mouth-watering Japanese flavour.
Their healthy and hearty plant-based foods reflect the healthy lifestyle of North Vancouver, with its lush forests and vegetation, crisp air, and rugged mountains. “We’re on a mission to bring nourishing meals that reflect the healthy living around us while packed with the delicious flavourings of Japanese cuisine.”
At their shop located in North Vancouver, you can find signature ramen and udon noodle bowls, buddha bowls with rice and miso gravy, smashed avocado toast on their house-made organic natural yeast bread, and more! They also sell their noodles, broths, gyozas, and various plant based baked goods in packaged frozen form – you can find these at the shop and other markets/locations across town.
Why do we do what we do? Well, we can probably talk for hours on this topic but basically, The Workshop was started by several individuals from diverse backgrounds that all became vegan/vegetarian for their personal reasons, whether it was for their health, their family’s health, the environment, and more. We all came to realize that the least we can do to stay healthy is to control our diet, exercise and simply do what we are all passionate about.
Question: How are you supporting other local businesses?
Answer: Pretty much almost everything is local, with the exception of some ingredients that are seasonal, making it difficult to get a local one. Our produce supplier, Pro Organics has amazing quality ingredients and work directly with local farms. All of our suppliers are local, and as they carry non-local items as well, when selecting our ingredients, we work to prioritize the ingredients that say “grown in BC.” We also try to support other local North Van businesses by giving out gift cards to local businesses for their social media giveaways and other fundraising initiatives. Our customers sometimes ask for us to help with things they are organizing. We like to participate in things like this because we can put a face to where the contribution goes. We use a local Coquitlam company for our packaging; they print in their warehouse on 100% recycled material and create jobs there. Our waste management is district combined with a Canadian-owned company.
We use organic flour grown in Armstrong BC, distributed by a local wholesaler called Snow Cap. They carry most of our raw materials for our baked goods and more. They have been very supportive and provided supplies during shortages. They also gave us a heads-up about these shortages when the flood came. Although, seasonal variations cause some fluctuations, our squash and mushrooms are almost always locally grown, along with the mixed greens we use.
We’re in a few different retailers – small, locally owned and Canadian owned bigger companies, including Choices, Fresh St. Market, IGA, Stongs, and more! We find a lot of mutual benefit in these local partnerships. Usually, there is a fee to have your product on the shelves, and you have to allocate a portion of earnings towards marketing. Some of the larger companies help out the smaller companies by waiving or discounting these fees.
All of our services are from BC-based businesses. Our banking is with Coast Capital, and our insurance is through a local agent.
Question: What social and environmental practices are you proud of?
Answer: We’ve transitioned to compostable/recyclable takeout containers and are always researching more sustainable options! We’ve been in business for 5 years. We found it difficult to find containers to package ramen and other hot foods, so we are proud we’ve figured it out. Once Covid-19 becomes less on the forefront, we’d like to move to reusable as we did prior to the pandemic.
We see the most impact with design, and we try to minimize food waste as much as possible. We use ingredients for multiple dishes, so we can use them efficiently so we rarely waste anything. Also, vegetarian food has a lot less impact than meat-based foods.
Our staff development is ongoing – we’re a small operation, so many people are skilled in many different things. We offer a benefits program for staff, but we make it optional for staff who want it since they pay for a portion of it and many of them have benefits through a partner. Our starting wages are minimum wage, but we increase this for positions above entry and training.
We try to give back to the community when the opportunity arises – it might be supporting someone’s baseball team or martial arts group. We give a lot of gift certificates and gift baskets and try our best to support anyone who walks in the door with a good cause.
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