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Cadillac Fairview announces 2007 ARC Award Winner: Salt Tasting Room
Canada’s Commercial Real Estate Leader Applauds 2007 ARC Awards Finalists, Honours Retail Visionaries with Scholarship to Ryerson University.
The Cadillac Fairview Corporation Limited proudly presented its tenth annual ARC Award (Achievement in new Retail Concepts) to Salt Tasting Room which is based in Vancouver, B.C.
Peter Sharpe, President and CEO of Cadillac Fairview, was on hand at Toronto’s Fermenting Cellar in the Distillery District to present the award and cheque for $50,000.
“This year marks the tenth anniversary of the ARC Awards,” said Mr. Sharpe. “Cadillac Fairview is proud to honour Canadian retailers who offer exciting new retail concepts. The four finalists this year were of very high quality which presented a difficult challenge to our judges in selecting a winner. We are pleased to present the award to Salt Tasting Room.”
Created by Cadillac Fairview in 1997, the ARC Award is unique to the North American real estate industry. Each year, a panel of judges short-lists four finalists from dozens of submissions, from which one recipient is selected. Last year, Cadillac Fairview presented the award to Joni Lien and Christine Wood, owners of SupperWorks in Oakville, Ontario.
Salt Tasting Room
Salt Tasting Room is situated in Blood Alley in Vancouver’s historic Gastown, and bills itself as a tasting room or charcuterie as they are known in France.
Co-owners Sean Heath and Scott Hawthorn have kept the concept unusually simple, small and focused. Patrons design their own meals by selecting three items from small-batch cured meats, artisan cheese and extraordinary wines. All of the meats and many of the cheeses are produced by local farmers, butchers and cheese makers.
An 18-foot long spruce communal table, along with no kitchen and no chef are what make this concept distinctive and successful in the Vancouver culinary scene.
Salt Tasting Room was one of the big winners at this year's Vancouver Magazine Restaurant Awards, capturing gold for best new informal restaurant and tying for silver in design.
In addition to naming the ARC winner, Cadillac Fairview also announced the other 2007 finalists: Crisca, Spring Rolls Go and Triple Flip.
Crisca
Crisca carries European inspired collections, designed for women between the ages of 40 and 60. Collections arrive every two weeks and are only available in small quantities. Once the pieces are sold, they are never repeated.
Crisca is located in Carrefour Laval, Quebec and is the brainchild of Canadian principals, Monte Perlman and Steven Belfer. The concept is patterned on Biba – the successful European retailer owned by Escada.
Crisca capitalizes on Biba’s fast-to-market system. Styles go from design to the sales floor in just 12 weeks, as opposed to six to nine months (the norm for other retailers servicing this market segment). This fast turnaround ensures that the latest trends are at Crisca first.
Spring Rolls Go
The Toronto-based Spring Rolls Go restaurant is a unique concept created by executive chef Hai Hua and CEO Thai Hua. The “go” model appeals to both the lunch customer who demands “fresh food, fast” and the dinner customer who wants a more formal and leisurely dining experience.
By day “go,” offers a quick service lunch where customers, who are surrounded by plasma TV screens, order at the counter, pay and wait for their lunch to be table delivered. Then magically at 4:00 p.m. “go” transforms into a uniquely chic dining establishment. This new variation on the original and highly successful Spring Rolls restaurant concept is looking to expand into many new locations.
Triple Flip: Flipwear for the Modern Girl
The original “flip girls”, Linda Maslechko and Mona Rae Peterson, are the mothers of several fashion forward girls looking for “unique, cool and comfortable” clothes. Based on their own active lives, they developed designs for a new clothing line they hoped would appeal to and reflect the values of their discriminating target shopper.
Today, the 1,800 square foot Calgary store now carries a full range of the Triple Flip private label with complementary brands including shoes, bags, jewelry, loungewear and specialty streetwear. The shopping experience is enhanced by in-store special “brand ownership” events like the Flip Girl photo shoots and the “Designer for a Day” one of a kind experience.
Cadillac Fairview Visionaries in Retail Innovation Award and Scholarship
Aldo Bensadoun is the founder & CEO of the ALDO Group, a privately-held company, which operates over 800 retail stores in North America. He has successfully built a chain of stores, which includes Aldo, Aldo Accessories, Transit, Feet First, First, Stone Ridge, Spring and Globo Shoes.
Aldo Bensadoun is also well known for his philanthropy. ALDO has committed millions of dollars to AIDS awareness and research organizations, including CanfAR, AmfAR and YouthAIDS.
In creating the Visionaries in Retail Innovation Award, Cadillac Fairview hopes to sustain the tradition of retail originality by supporting the next generation of retail innovators. The 2007 recipient is Diana Pitassi, a graduating student from the School of Retail Management, Ryerson University in Toronto. Diana was chosen based on her high GPA and as a result of an excellent project she submitted on retail innovation. The scholarship is for $5,000.