50 BCBusiness december 2015 (top left) courtesy of thomas haas; (aboVe) robert kenney
on THe way Home from Grouse, KaTe swInGs By
ThoMas haas chocoLaTes & PaTisserie To pICK up
some sTollen for CHrIsTmas day
or Thomas Haas, the holiday season
starts mid-November with the corpo-
rate accounts, and by December 10 the
retail store is going crazy. Haas does six
times more business from November 24
to December 24 than the busiest months
throughout the year. Christmas Eve
probably has the most customer volume—
between 950 and 1,000 orders—but in terms
of sales dollars, the biggest day has consis-
tently been the second Tuesday of December.
"And it all comes from one kitchen," says
Haas, who opened the store 10 years ago.
"We are not able to produce a lot in advance
because that would be against an artisan
philosophy." The most popular items are gift
boxes, bûche de Noël on Christmas Eve and
the Christmas stollen: "Every day we make
300 stollens, and every day we sell out."
THree days To Go—IT's
TIme To pICK up THe TurKey
aT THe BuTCHer on 10TH In
VanCouVer, fresH from
k&M farMs
With his wife, Kathy,
and daughter, Jill, Mark
Robbins raises free-range
chickens and turkeys on a
12-acre farm on the western
outskirts of Abbotsford.
Really free range: the fowl
live outside in a eld with
shelters for bad weather. An
electric fence protects them
from coyotes with help from
a llama that also discourages
birds of prey. When they
started the farm in 2002,
Mark was still working as a
B.C. Ministry of Agriculture
agrologist so it was easier to
leave the birds outside than
herd them in and out of a
barn each day. Turkeys that
are allowed to get out and
run around a bit get a lot
more exercise, says Robbins,
and that helps with the
¨avour—as does their diet,
he notes, because they are
able to forage. Robbins buys
the birds when they are a
day old: 600 in late May or
early June for Thanksgiving
and 800 in early August to
be fresh for the Christmas
market. His turkeys are
large—hens are 20¨25
pounds, and toms can weigh
30 pounds or more—and
sell for $3.75 per pound.
Most people preorder, and
there are two days before
each holiday for pickup at
the farm, or birds can be
ordered through some retail
locations. The rest of the
time frozen product is avail-
able by appointment.
CREATURE COMFORTS
(from left) Thomas Haas
serves a crowd of holiday
shoppers; turkeys range
freely at K&M Farms; rein-
deer from the ReputAbel
Game Farm appear in films
and commercials
