The unique Club Kitchen concept in downtown Vancouver has become a popular option for foodservice operators with its move-ready kitchen space operating under a single roof. It’s also proven popular with locals who are frequenting Club Kitchen’s operators regularly.
Club Kitchen is a delivery and takeout-focused restaurant concept with dine-in, designed to help restaurateurs expand their businesses to a premier location in Vancouver’s Yaletown with minimized risks and maximized profits.
Currently, eight restaurant brands are operating out of Club Kitchen with limited additional spaces available for foodservice operations.
“It’s a shared space consisting of 13 kitchens under one roof, sharing a communal storefront with dine-in seating available,” said JJ Fraser, Operations Manager of Club Kitchen Management Inc. “The idea is that each of these kitchens are private spaces that are fully turnkey and ready to operate.
“We take care of everything including the tenant build out, the makeup air, the mechanical infrastructure, and we provide equipment. The idea is that the restaurant operators can just come in and cook.”
“The shared element of Club Kitchen is the front house operation. We provide staff at the front to handle customer interaction, hand off orders for delivery drivers and customers, and then facility maintenance and service is managed by Club Kitchen as well.”
The establishments operating out of Club Kitchen include Hello Nori, Thai Away Home, Pearl Castle, Barbarella Pizza, Hui Lau Shan, Indi Co., Dragon Bowl and Wings CHKN Shack.
Club Kitchen is in an exceptionally ideal place for foodservice operators with access to more than 100,000 potential customers within a three-kilometre radius which includes high-rise residential towers, mixed-use commercial buildings with retail and office, community buildings and parks, and large event venues such as BC Place and Rogers Arena. “It’s a premium, high traffic location,” said Fraser. “It has high visibility, as well as a considerable amount of foot traffic from the residences that are around us. We’re in the base of the Arc building, which has about 1,000 units within a two minute walk. Some residents will come down sometimes two, three, even four times a day to order at Club Kitchen, building a great sense of community here.”
“The other reason we chose Club Kitchen’s location is accessibility in and access out. A lot of the transactions at Club Kitchen are happening from delivery drivers and third-party partner channels like Uber. It’s easy to get across the entire city from where we’re located.”
Club Kitchen is open seven days a week from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. On Fridays and Saturdays some of the brands stay open until midnight.
Fraser said the remaining spaces available in Club Kitchen are about 300 square feet. Each kitchen is unique in its layout. One is a show kitchen right up at the front with extra visibility and visible through the concierge area. All the kitchens are also visible from the outside on the street.
Shanon Thornley, Senior Director, Commercial Leasing at Concord Pacific Developments Corp., said the concept is targeting healthy food, burgers, Mediterranean, tacos and coffee to fill the remaining spaces.
Besides its location, she said that the Club Kitchen advantage includes allowing businesses to launch for less while cutting down on monthly expenses with shared operating costs for essentials like maintenance, front-of-house staffing, and more.
The Club Kitchen concept also makes sense for foodservice operators considering the challenges they face:
- 60 per cent of restaurants fail within one year of starting up and nearly 80 per cent close before their fifth anniversary;
- It takes most restaurants three to five years to become profitable because of high startup costs and tight margins; and
- Poor location is the number one reason they fail because the best locations entail higher rent costs and more barriers to entry.
“My belief is this is a much more cost-effective and lower risk opportunity compared to opening your own restaurant, especially in downtown Vancouver,” said Fraser. “It has lower up-front costs. It’s not a traditional lease, and there is less commitment. You’re not tied into a five or 10-year lease, also offering flexibility.
“There is also the speed of starting up. Club Kitchen has already passed the health inspection, and we’ve already passed the occupancy permits. Thai Away Home is our most recent tenant to join. From signing the agreement to selling their first dish, it only took Thai Away Home three weeks to open at Club Kitchen. And the tenant made equipment changes, so they could have even opened a week sooner if they had left the equipment as it was.”
Fraser said being part of a larger group allows Club Kitchen to negotiate better service contracts, better trade agreements, and partnerships in the industry.
“There are nuances that being part of a collective allows us to go negotiate on behalf of the licensees,” he said.
“It’s a first-to-market concept in Vancouver,” said Shanon Thornley.
“We see this as a viable opportunity not only for Club Kitchen but the partners we’ve brought on and the future partners we’ll bring on and if it’s as successful as it has been and continues to be, we’ll want to replicate that in other markets,” added Fraser.
There’s a couple of different ways that customers can place an order for food at Club Kitchen. They can walk in and order from a kiosk. They can order for a single restaurant or multiple restaurants on single checkout. Orders can be placed outside the location, or it can be delivered through the website. All the brands are also available on various third-party delivery services.
For leasing inquiries at Club Kitchen, please contact Shanon Thornley at 604-895-8233 or email at shannon.thornley@concordpacific.com or fill out an intake form through the website: https://partners.clubkitchen.ca
Club Kitchen representatives will also be available for information at the ICSC conference October 7-9 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.
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