Plenty of Vancouver restaurateurs plan to open new restaurants while increasing sales for packaged sauces and meals sold through grocery stores.
Vikram Vij first told Business in Vancouver in October 2009 that he would move his popular 2,000-square-foot West 11th Avenue Vij’s restaurant to Cambie Street near West 15th Avenue. Much heel-dragging followed, and he has still not moved into the 3,000-square-foot space that he has owned since 2005.
“Getting our production facility in Cloverdale going took us a year longer than expected,” Vij told BIV.
“I wanted to make sure that that facility was running fine and smooth first. Now, we’re going gangbusters.”
Vij and wife Meeru Dhalwala now operate a 28,000-square-foot production facility in Cloverdale that churns out sauces and prepared meals that sell in Whole Foods Market, IGA Marketplace and Nesters Market.
But because he’s focusing first on the production facility, Vij has had to absorb a $10,000 monthly cost by not having a tenant at the Cambie site under office space that he also owns and occupies.
Vij is seeking bank financing to remodel the site. He expects that the Cambie Street Vij’s will open in December and the current Vij’s will relaunch with a new concept in 2012.
Vij’s packaged sauces and meals are now being sold in about 35 stores, but he expects to be selling in hundreds of stores across Canada and the U.S. within the next year.
Vancouver’s Chen family, like Vij, plans to open a new restaurant while increasing sales for its packaged sauces.
Its 10th restaurant, the 2,800-square-foot Pink Elephant Thai, is set to open in April squished between a Tim Hortons and an A&W on an Alberni Street strip that already houses upscale eateries like Coast, Market and Italian Kitchen.
“Picture an izakaya, but one that is all Thai,” Thai House Restaurant Group’s 37-year-old director of operations Desmond Chen told BIV.
He has yet to hire the 25 new employees he’ll need to staff the 90-seat tapas-style eatery.
The Chen family’s five-restaurant Thai House chain will celebrate its 25th ann iversary later this year. But no new Thai Houses have opened since 1996.
Instead the family has opened:
- Urban Thai Bistro (2000);
- Samba Brazilian Steakhouse (2002);
- Chilli House Thai Bistro (2005); and
- Charm Modern Thai and Bar (2008).
Japanese tapas restaurants known as izakayas have been popping up regularly across Vancouver in recent years with owners of both Hapa Izakaya and Guu steadily adding new locations.
Chen said sales for Thai House sauces have grown from $45,000 in 2006 to hundreds of thousands of dollars today.
“It’s not close to where I want it to be – over the $1 million mark,” he said.
Vancouver-based Nando’s Canada continues to open new restaurants and increase sauce sales through the Overwaitea Food Group, Sobeys and H.Y. Louie Co. Ltd. grocery stores.
President Dan Isserow told BIV that he will open the chain’s 30th location in Ottawa in March.
He said sauce sales grew 19% last year and are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.
Earls Restaurants owner Stan Fuller was in Minneapolis, Minnesota, last month scouting new locations for his 60-bistro chain.
Fuller operates five U.S. Earls: three in Denver, Colorado; one in Scottsdale, Arizona; and one in Belleview, Washington.
He plans to open another half-dozen restaurants in the next three years.