A Halifax cafe is trying to prove you can still run a business and help make meals more affordable for people who need them.
That’s the goal for the Upward Kitchen and Cafe, which opened about nine months ago on Gottingen Street, according to founder Mark Brand.
He says the most expensive thing on the cafe menu is $7. Their frozen meals are also $7, and the daily special, made hot, is $5. Everything is also locally sourced, he said, with no ingredients that you cannot pronounce.
“We put our flag in the ground and said, you can do good and do business at the same time. They shouldn’t be and never should have been mutually exclusive. They should be included,” Brand said.
Mark Brand pictured at The Nook Upward Kitchen and Cafe, which opened about nine months ago. (Upward Kitchen and Cafe)
Customers can also buy pay-it-forward tokens that other people can exchange for a free meal.
Brand says about 50 of those tokens get redeemed every day.
The Upward Kitchen also has a location in Bayer’s Lake that prepares lunches for the province’s school lunch program. And they have a kitchen on Nora Bernard Street, called the Upward Mobility Kitchen East. It took the philosophy of their location out west in Vancouver, which was very successful, and brought it over here to the east coast, said Brand, back to to where he is from.
“The North End is is another home to me. I grew up on those streets.”
The Gottingen Street cafe has more than 25 chefs from 17 different countries, he said. And they keep prices cheap but making things in large batches and only offering a few options. He says it’s the same way fast food restaurants operate, using economies of scale, to keep their prices low. The difference is they make everything from scratch with good ingredients, he said.
Part of Brand’s goal now is to get the word out that everyone is welcome to have this food. He said some people have reached out, wondering if buying it would deprive someone else.
“No, it’s literally for you. It’s for everybody,” he said.
“We don’t turn anybody away.”
There are a lot of people in the North End of Halifax who struggle to make ends meet, some people who are homeless, he said, but there are also some people who just want to try and eat more affordably. They are all welcome, he said.
Mark Brand says Upward Kitchen and Cafe makes large batches of meals to help keep costs down. (Upward Kitchen and Cafe)
If you don’t have a token, they keep some on hand, and Brand said they will feed you regardless.
“We don’t turn anybody away.”
Brand says he was raised by Maritimers, and they love to give, but the way the economy is right now, people don’t have enough to give, and the tokens offer them that chance again.
