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Chef Mark Brand prepares food for a fundraising dinner at Save On Meats in Vancouver last fall.Teymour Adham/Supplied
The organizer: Mark Brand
The pitch: Addressing food insecurity
Mark Brand has been cooking since he was a teenager and he opened his first restaurant in Vancouver in 2007, naming it after his mother Boneta.
He went on to open other eateries, a cocktail bar and entertainment venues but soon found that he wanted to have more of a social impact.
In 2010 he acquired Save on Meats a local institution in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. “I knew the owner and he was retiring, and it had been a place of food security for 57 years, where people could go and sit at the counter and have a burger for four bucks,” Mr. Brand, 50, recalled.
After extensive renovations, he kept its focus on social impact and sold tokens for $2.25 which donors could give to someone in need to redeem for a sandwich. There were also areas for people involved in urban agriculture. “We used it as a space for us all to learn together,” he said.
He incorporated Save on Meats as one of B.C.’s first benefit companies, a special designation for businesses that make a contribution to the community. “My entire mandate was: We can use business as a tool for good,” he said.
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To serve even more people in need, Mr. Brand launched a charity called The Better Life Foundation which provides regular meals to various groups such as women’s shelters and homeless organizations. The foundation also offers culinary training for at-risk people including ex-offenders.
Mr. Brand has expanded his social enterprise, called Upward Kitchens, and the foundation to his hometown of Halifax. Upward Kitchens runs a coffee shop called The Nook which is supported by sponsors and offers affordable meal and sells tokens. Upward also runs a farm in Dartmouth, a teaching kitchen for young people, and prepares meals for around 30 Halifax schools. Mr. Brand has also just launched a partnership with the Nova Scotia Community College and Saint Mary’s University to provide frozen meals for students.
Mr. Brand’s objective has always been to incorporate lessons from entrepreneurship into social impact. And he’s furious that food insecurity remains an issue in a country as rich as Canada. “It should be a national crisis,” he said. “Water and food and shelter should be guaranteed. As Canadians, we have no excuse.”