History of the stir

2019

In 2019, the KFPC partnered with stakeholders in the region to access funding

from the British Columbia Ministry of Agriculture and Food to carry out the “Kamloops Food

Processing and Innovation Hub Feasibility Pilot”. The goal of this project was to investigate the best model for a Food Hub in the Kamloops region. The need for processing facilities had been identified by a number of regional policies and plans. There was also a mandate in British Columbia to develop a network of regionally scaled and interconnected food hubs, linking food producers and processors with shared technology, research and development, production equipment, expertise and services.

Feasibility research strongly suggested the need for and feasibility of a food innovation and processing hub for the Kamloops region. Surveying food businesses across the region revealed that many of the key challenges they faced could be addressed by the support and infrastructure available through a food hub: rental of commercial kitchen and storage space, access to specialized equipment, business mentorship, workshops and information about best practices. Consultations with stakeholders and experts validated these findings, while also suggesting the need to prioritize collaboration and networking opportunities for food businesses, distribution and retail representatives, food producers and others working in the food system as well as prioritizing larger-scale processing opportunities available to food producers more broadly in the region, to encourage more income diversification, address income-related barriers, and create a feedback loop that will encourage more food production in the Kamloops region.

2021-2022

In 2021, the KFPC received $800,000 from the BC Ministry of Agriculture and Food to implement our regional food hub. In phase one of our food hub project, we contributed a portion of the Ministry funds to the construction of the new Gardengate Training Centre in North Kamloops, operated by Open Door Group. This state of the art commercial kitchen is now shared by Gardengate’s mental health clients as well as by members of the Stir, called Stir Makers.

One of our first Stir Makers, KMK Living Inc., began renting the Gardengate kitchen through The Stir in June of 2021 in order to turn their home kombucha brewing hobby into a business. They were able to brew and store their products in the Gardengate commercial kitchen to meet the regulations required to start selling their fermented beverages at regional farmers markets, launch a home delivery program, and start wholesaling to retailers. One year later, in May of 2022, KMK ‘graduated’ from the Gardengate kitchen and opened their own brewery in Kamloops. You can now find KMK Living Inc. products on tap or on the shelf around Kamloops, and as far as Sun Peaks, Merritt and the Shuswaps. Our primary goal at The Stir is to help regional food entrepreneurs overcome their initial hurdles and get going with less risk and more certainty so that they can efficiently grow and succeed beyond our facilities.

Simultaneously with the launch of the Gardengate facility, the Kamloops Food Policy Council contributed funding to the Kweseltken Kitchen, a mobile food processing trailer operated by the Community Futures Development Corporation of the Central Interior First Nations (CFDC of CIFN). This trailer is equipped with smoking, canning and dehydrating equipment that can be taken directly to rural Indigenous communities and enable them to start making value-added products utilizing traditional food preservation methods. The Kweseltken Kitchen pivoted during the devastating forest fire season of the summer of 2021 to help feed evacuees and frontline workers. The trailer continued to feed our community when the Kamloops region was impacted by the atmospheric river later that year that led to the closure of our major roadways connecting us to the coast.

In April of 2021, the KFPC began renting a 5000 square foot building at 185 Royal Ave on Kamloops’ North Shore to convert it into The Stir’s flagship facility. The Stir headquarters has six main areas of focus:

The Stir Kitchen, a full-scale food processing facility
The Stir Warehouse, equipped with a loading bay, pallet racking, a forklift and a 7,000 cubic foot walk-in freezer
The Stirfront, a pop-up retail and community space
The Riverfront Courtyard, an outdoor community event space on the South Thompson River
The Public Parklet, a freely accessible greenspace with shade coverings
The KFPC offices

2022-2023

The Stir Kitchen opened in October of 2022, welcoming 2 new Stir Makers and helping them to start their first businesses. Since then, The Stir Kitchen has been the home base of more than 10 food and beverage start-ups. With funding from the Canada Community Revitalization Fund, we constructed our Riverfront Courtyard and Public Parklet, completed in the spring of 2023.

In May of 2022, The Stir began developing a partnership with River Select, a BC-based Indigenous Fishery Cooperative, to utilize The Stir as their distribution hub for the BC Interior, renting our office space, kitchen and warehouse. With funds from DFO, River Select contributed to our warehouse storage capacity by purchasing a forklift and installing a 7,000 cubic foot freezer and the KFPC installed pallet racking for the freezer and dry storage area. We also installed a heat pump for the warehouse to maintain proper climate control for aggregating food products. The Stir Warehouse is now used as an aggregation and distribution center for River Select's value-added BC salmon products as well as a cold storage facility for a local lamb farmer with capacity for many more clients to come.

With our smaller population spread over a larger area, food processors in the Kamloops and Interior regions struggle to grow their business as quickly as their counterparts in the Lower Mainland. By strengthening our local supply chain, we will empower our clients to utilize more local inputs in their products and increase their competitiveness in the BC market by being able to distribute more effectively to distant communities. We have partnered with TruGIS, Lower Columbia Initiatives Corporation, Boundary Community Ventures Association, Central Kootenay Food Policy Council and Selkirk College to develop an interactive virtual Food Supply Chain Model to help analyze where new distribution routes could be implemented or existing routes could be shared and better utilized. Producers, processors, retailers, and distributors will be able to input data into the model and get real time results. We have also begun implementing an ecommerce hub on the Open Food Network as an online distribution platform to better connect our food hub clients with local and regional markets. Tapestry Collective Co-op has been facilitating our Distribution Feasibility Study with key stakeholders in the region over the past year to determine how The Stir can best meet the needs of our food system.