Cook Studio - A Growing Business With a Social Conscience

Publish Date: September 2006

Finding a way to benefit the community and make a living isn't an easy task, but for one new contractor to the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, it's a requirement.

Cook Studio is the new food supplier at the headquarters of VANOC, and it's a business with a conscience. Cook Studio hires disadvantaged, disabled and at-risk Lower Mainland residents.

Cook Studio began as a training centre for 'street involved' or 'at-risk' youth in 1990 but President James Kennedy, a Certified Chef de Cuisine, decided in order to be successful the company also had to create jobs for their graduates to keep them employed.

Over the past 16 years Cook Studio has trained over 800 graduates to work in the food services industry. This expansion has led the company to create a bakeshop that supplies batter, baked goods and catering to a wide number of Lower Mainland retailers, businesses, non-profits and government. The expansion is partly what led to the new VANOC contract.

"The only way to keep the training and employment programs successful is to open up new revenue streams. We want to continue expanding our services and creating new employment opportunities for people who are often marginalized, particularly in the downtown eastside," says James Kennedy.

Currently Cook Studio has four operations. A training facility; a café for youth at risk that receives funding from both the Provincial and Federal governments; a commissary operation that makes batter, dough, biscotti, sandwiches and other cold food items for sale to food service operations; and a full-service catering business and they are also consulting for other organizations. Cook Studio has managed to marry their social conscience with their business goals and they are excited about their newest client, the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.

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