A new take-out service that helps put street people to work and has a low carbon footprint is being billed as "the most socially responsible lunch you'll get in Vancouver."
Bites on Bikes is a new service offered by the H.A.V.E. Culinary Training Society – otherwise known as the H.A.V.E. Café – a non-profit that helps people from the Downtown Eastside get back on their feet by training them as line cooks.
H.A.V.E. has partnered with Shift Urban Cargo Delivery to deliver lunch with electric cargo bicycles downtown and in Vancouver's east side.
The lunch boxes cost $12 each and consist of a gourmet sandwich, fresh fruit, a homemade cookie and bottle of San Pellegrino mineral water. Delivery is included and the minimum order is $40. Proceeds from the new service will go back into the H.A.V.E. program.
"It helps us expand our business model so we can put more money back into training," Ian Tostenson, director for the H.A.V.E. Culinary Training Society, told Business in Vancouver.
In the last five years, the H.A.V.E. Cafe has trained about 500 people.
"Seventy-five per cent of our students have had a job of some sort," Tostenson.
The H.A.V.E. society got its start when Mills Basics Office Productivity helped subsidize the operation for the first few years until it became self-sustaining through food sales at the H.A.V.E. Café. (See "Building on sustainability basics", September 2011.)
