Michael and I (and Julia and Ludo at Urban Digs Farm) have been scheming over the past year to do something we don’t think anyone has really done before. It’s no lunar landing, but we think it’s a new and important way to source your food.

Many local farms offer seasonal CSA boxes. CSA is short for Community Supported Agriculture, and that term is pretty descriptive. By subscribing to a particular farm for all their vegetables in a season, the community both supports the farm and shares in the ups, downs and interesting aspects of farming. The shares are paid for upfront, and thus the farmers can afford to purchase equipment, hire staff, etc. So, why can’t we do something similar with farm animals?

The BEASTY BOX program involves Burnaby’s Urban Digs Farm and rest of their farm co-op in the Fraser Valley. Based on the number of subscriptions, these farms will raise chickens, ducks, rabbits, sheep, cows and even water buffalo specifically for beasty box members. We are also sourcing pigs from Gelderman Farms.

Re-Up BBQ, as the kitchen partner for this project, receives the animals from the abbatoir and gets to work butchering them and processing the meat so that it will provide a good spread for all the members. It’s a challenge to get everyone a good mix of meaty groceries when you’re not just ordering specific cuts of meat. There’s a lot of planning that must go into making sure a single cow gets divided up fairly between all members. This means that not everyone will get, say, ribs one week, but that some will recieve t-bone steaks, others will get some tenderloin and others yet may find an inside round roast in their boxes.

Additionally, we find that we’ve got to work hard to get the most value out of each animal we receive, so the kitchen crew takes the offal to make terrines and pates, grinds the secondary cuts to make sausages, takes the bones for stock, etc. Then they have to get really creative with the final bits, so they add in some veggies from the farms and make soup, pasta sauce, stews and pies.

We did an experimental subscription this past summer, and it was certainly a learning experience (a delicious one too). Now we think we’ve got into a good rhythm with the beasty box system and good things are going to come to the membership for the winter.

If you’re interested in subscribing, check out www.beastybox.com for more details and sign up sheets.

ALERT! TODAY ONLY - August 14th

Tickets for our annual Labour Day BBQ “On The Beach,” going down September 1, are only $30 each instead of $45!

Join us for a great time out at the River Market, support a GREAT cause and spoil yourself one more time before the winter doldrums hit.

Get yer tickets here!

If you need anymore reasons, how about these:

Road 13 Vineyards will be sponsoring the bar with their tasty and refreshing Honest John line of wines!

There will be 3 AMAZING meat draws where you could win the like of a whole, smoked beef brisket, 3 racks of BBQ ribs, 5 lbs of our smoked bacon, piles of our sausages, sauces and more.

And, hey! We’re putting together a kids area, so you are more than welcome to bring your little ones for a great time!

Friends -

Thank you all for sending in pictures of your leftovers. Now that we know more about some of the terrible realities of lunch out there, we are even more glad to help!

This week’s winner of a free lunch for 2 at the car or the shop was @hongerb and here is the photo:

This is rice and soy chicken (which we thought was a chopped up hot dog)

Congratulations to @hongerb and everyone else who sent in a submission. Keep on going and someone’s going to win lunch for 20!

Well folks,

For all of you who signed up with Urban Digs Farm as a subscriber to the Beasty Box meat and charcuterie weekly membership, we have news for you! Last night we worked late, butchering our first whole pig for the program. We received a beautiful, 250lb hog from Gelderman farms and set about portioning it into prime cuts, meat for ground and curing, bacon and offal. It was lots of fun, and we’ll be back in the kitchen again tonight preparing meat for sausages, hocks for stocks and more. Here are some pictures from last night’s activities:

Local, free-range eggs are very expensive - especially if you are a restaurant trying…trying to break even everyday.

But. Local, free-range eggs taste better. They are better for you. And, they help support a smaller economy based within a community.

So, how do you make money and serve good eggs?

Feed the chickens with your scrap waste!

Urban Digs farm, located in South Burnaby, raises chickens, and we are starting to feed them. If we do this - and wash the fresh eggs that we receive every week - we lower our food cost to an acceptable level for a fast food restaurant. It may be more work, but we’re happy to do it.

Come and join us for Brunch at the River Market in New Westminster every weekend. Truly farm fresh eggs on every plate.

16 restaurant owners in Vancouver have signed a letter to Mayor Gregor Robertson claiming that food carts are cutting into their revenue. While I have not read the actual letter, a summary of the situation was made available in the Business in Vancouver publication.

The article states that counter service restaurants such as the Pita Pit are seeing a large dip in their sales on account of food carts. Here is what I have to say in response:

REGARDING ILLEGAL OPERATIONS:

1. A Hot Dog vendor operating illegaly at 4am should not be associated with the “new wave” of food carts that have hit the streets. Please show me some evidence of food vendors, who have been granted licenses since the food cart pilot project of 2010, operating illegally and without regard for nearby businesses.

REGARDING COMPETITION:

1. Thanks to the regulation of the program, mobile food vendors have a commitment to use some degree of local or organic/natural ingredients in their product. Often, this commitment leads to lower profit margins for the vendor. One would think these lower margins would be offset by the lower costs associated with mobile vending (see point 2).

2. It is not comparitively cheap to run a food cart business. In addition to the lower margins realized from our products, we face the following costs:

• - Commissary rent: $500 (trucks with kitchens)-$2000(carts that do prep offsite) per month
• - Parking spot at vending location: $500/month for trucks
• - Permit Fees: $1179/year
• - Parking spots for carts overnight: $200/month
• - Gas: $500+ per month
• - Propane: $300-$600 per month: This is more than a counter service restaurants average Fortis bill by quite a lot!
• - Insurance: $150-300 per month
• - Share of electricity at the commissary: $70/month
• - Addition labour costs of driving your kitchen from your vending site back to the commissary followed by washing, cleaning and prep. This is instead of being able to wash, clean and prep while open for business because there is not enough space in the carts to do so. There is approximately 1 hour on either side of operating hours involved in hitching, transporting the cart and washing the dishes. That’s if your commissary is near Downtown, and if your commissary is near downtown, you’re paying much higher rent.
• - Carts cost between $15,000 to $100,000. Mobile food cart businesses have to amortize these costs over time just like brick and mortar start up costs.
• - Pick up truck or cargo van to tow the trailer: $3000+ or $500/month to lease

3. It rains. Brick and mortar restaurants have roofs and seats. Every day that it rains, the brick and mortar counter service restaurants out-compete the food carts. Many carts shut down for the winter because it’s not profitable on a day to day basis, yet they are still paying many of the aforementioned costs of their business.

4. Our carts can (and often do) break down on the way to the vending location. Burst pipes in the winter, flat tires, generator repair and not to mention traffic jams all affect the ability of food carts to open on time, if at all, each day

5. Re-Up just opened a 900 square foot counter service restaurant in the New Westminster River Market. It IS comparatively cheaper to run than our food cart.

WHY DO WE DO IT?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining, whining or asking for special treatment. I love what I do.

Operating a food cart is demanding, the physical labour is punishing and the hours are longer than one would expect. We do it in a climate that is very different to L.A. and in a city that does not have the critical mass of consumers that New York does. We do it because we love the food that we make, we get to make our food from scratch and we see the project succeeding in the long term like in Portland and San Francisco.

Food carts are fun. Food cart pods are novel and communal. These things contribute to the better enjoyment of one’s city. There are definitely some kinks that need to be worked out with our city’s bureacracy, but I would argue that these are logistical issues with a new program, not illegal vending issues or issues of unfair competition. I urge everybody to look to the long term city plans before decrying the town’s food carts.

I applaud what the city has done with mobile food. The residents of Vancouver have embraced the program (see Tourism Vancouver’s Street Food City, the block parties at the Waldorf, the Georgia Straight’s Street Food Carnival). If larger businesses are seeing a downturn in their sales because consumers are opting for healthier, local, made from scratch cuisine, I say “Bring it on!”

A few of you were asking about this earlier this evening. My dear friend “H” (Robert Holl-Allen), the bar manager at Jules Bistro in Gastown, gave me a great recipe for a beautiful cocktail involving Tequila. For parties where there are lots of people and there’s a big crush at the bar, this is a great way to make the bartender’s evening a little easier, but still offer an amazing drink!!

TEQUILA CON VENDITA

The Vendita

Stuff a blender full of mint leaves.

Add 2 jalepeno peppers

Add the juice of 2 limes

fill with pineapple juice

Blend!!!!

Serve 1oz of reposado tequila and 1oz of “vendita” in separate glasses. The Vendita is the chaser for the tequila shot!.

ENJOY!

We were so busy last weekend! We catered two weddings, AND the “2012 Canadian National Bikini, Figure, Fitness, Men’s Physique and Men’s Elite Bodybuilding Championships” took place at the conference center next to our shop! The boardwalk was transformed into the Jersey Shore overnight - and no one had any sauce on their meals. I guess there’s a lot of sugar and honey in the BBQ sauces, so not so great for lean muscle making. Needless to say, everything about the weekend was totally crazy.

One of the best things to come out of the chaos was this recipe for punch, supplied by the Junior League of Austin, Texas. I don’t know about you, but I never really knew anything about the Junior League past Betty Draper’s association with it in Mad Men. Now I know that they can make a pretty mean drink!

Governor’s Mansion Peach Tea Punch:
4 cups water
3 tea bags (orange pekoe)
2 cups loosely packed mint leaves
1L bottle of peach nectar
1 (16oz) can of frozen lemonade concentrate - thawed
1/2 cup of 1:1 simple syrup
1L gingerale
1L club soda
Garnish with peach slices and mint

Oh yeah, and we added about a bottle of bourbon to this concoction

The other awesome thing to come out of the weekend was the super crew we had to cater all the weddings. Because we were so busy, we called in a few favours with friends in the restaurant industry. We worked out that between everyone, there were over 100 years of solid hospitality experience to go around! Thanks Sam, Oracle, Katharine, Krista, Emma, Jacey and Scott. We couldn’t have done it without you!The last wedding we BBQ’d at, on Sunday, the hosts rewarded us with delicious marshmallows from Butter Bakery - of course, because one of Butter’s bakers was getting married!!

Some of you have, astutely, been asking why such a price increase for our Labour Day BBQ: Pit Masters and Pour Master V II.

Last year, we teamed up with Tantalus Vineyards, Kurtis Kolt (from the Westender Wine Column among other pursuits), the Waldorf Hotel and DJ Rico Uno to do something that had never been done in Vancouver: a wine and BBQ themed pop-up restaurant and party where people could come, stay a while and be spoiled with food, drinks and music in the setting sun.

All of the groups involved took a hit on the event - but that was just fine as we were all passionate to see the inaugural party succeed. And succeed it did! We’re proud to say that the Street Food Vancouver association has taken the idea and run with it for their summer Food Cart Fest at same great Waldorf Hotel patio — beer garden included!!

This year, we’re upping the ante at our own party, and we’d like to break even (to be blunt about it…). It truly is an all you can eat party (or rather the deliciousness will just keep coming out of our kitchen, so get it while you can). Now that we have a place to call home with all the amenities of a commercial kitchen, we can do so much more in the way of culinary delights. We’ve got dessert and ice-cream and sweet, Southern party favours to boot.

There’s two floors of patio action, overlooking the water, activities for the kids and adults alike (so don’t feel like you need to get a babysitter), entertainment and a dance floor, and the venerable Kurtis Kolt is leading a free wine tasting for the first 20 people to buy tickets (as of right now, there are 3 spots left…)

One of the things we’re most excited about, is that we can stock a full bar! So, we’ll have Southern punches, local craft beer, a wine selection by Kurtis, and even an oyster shooter bar at our sister - and next door - restaurant, Fathom Seafood. The drinks aren’t included in the ticket price, but they’ll be much more reasonable than going to a restaurant.

So, friends! Come on down and be spoiled with BBQ, the late summer’s sunset, cool drinks and more. We’d love to be your host, and we’d love to introduce you to New Westminster’s gem, the River Market.

If that sounds delightful, you can buy tickets here!

Here are some photos from last year at the Waldorf Hotel!

Some dedicated bacon users:

Saskia and Cornel picked some veggies from their deck garden for a hot-awesome bacon sautee, and Kevin McConnell (@frenchpressme) did some magic with his Cadeaux Bakery inspired bacon cinnnamon rolls.