BCBusiness

FEBRUARy 2018 BCBusiness 59 ADAM BLASBERG WEEKEND WARRIoR i've played soccer and squash since I was very young. I played both at a competitive level because I am supercompetitive. That translated well into poker later on. It started out in high school, where we used to play home games with friends. It was just for fun, but I could still have the desire to win, and I could see there was a lot of skill involved in the game. I studied it a bit and started winning and had a bit of an edge over my high-school classmates, but I didn't take it up professionally until about 2011. I opened an online poker account and got into the game starting at lower stakes. The better you get, the higher your wages become or the higher the buy-ins that you enter for tournaments and sit-and-gos. I found myself winning money, and I was able to move up in stakes and make more money. That became what I was doing semi-professionally for the next three years. My hourly rate started out around $20 and peaked around $80. I graduated from McGill University in December 2012 and had planned to move to Mexico and take a crack at playing profession- ally full-time, but my dad was diagnosed with cancer in November. We had a couple of hotels on Vancouver Island, and I started running them. He was treated successfully, but that altered my focus and made me realize that business was also a ˆeld I was interested in. Now I'll go to the casino and play in cash games for fun on the weekend. I'll do that occasionally, if I have some time and I'm looking to really focus on something and tune out of the ongoing business stu‰ that's always in my head. I ˆnd it's a good place where I can get into a Šow state and tune in on what's happening in front of me. I still play occasionally online. I'll log into my old account, and I still have some money on there, so I'll play in a couple of smaller-stake buy-ins. —as told to Felicity Stone This interview has been edited exPerienCe/ Vancouver has two more experiential retail spaces. Toronto-based Roots Ltd.'s 3,900-square-foot roots Cabin concept store in CF Pacific Centre is one of just three in the world. in yaletown, Mason Wu and Muyun Li, owners of Kokko Luxury Boutique in Richmond, are combining avant-garde fashion, books and home accessories with a wellbeing bar and photo studio in their 22,000-square-foot leisure Center. shoP/ Residents of Kamloops, Kelowna, Prince George and Vernon can now order groceries from save-on-foods online and choose where and when to pick them up. Personal shoppers assemble the order and load the groceries into the customer's car at designated online shopping pickup parking stalls. sParkle/ van Cleef & arpels has opened its first stand-alone boutique in Vancouver. The 4,000-square-foot Alberni Street location is the high-end French brand's second largest in the Americas, after the Maison in New york City. Dine/ Sammy Piccolo, the owner of Prado Cafe, recently launched spade Coffee + spirits + treats + small Plates, a 40-seat licensed eatery in Vancouver's Commercial Drive neighbourhood that is a community coffee house by day and an italian restaurant by night. eat/ Early this spring, Vancouver's Hawksworth Group will add a second Bel Café location, in its new test kitchen and catering commissary, Chef's kitchen on West Third Avenue in Kitsilano. –F.S. The latest developments in the world of lifestyle, from restaurants to retail (and more!) DEALER'S choIcE Rahemtulla gave up professional poker when his father became ill Husein Rahemtulla and his childhood friends Dhruv Sood and Becky Switzer founded Fresh Prep Inc., a Vancouver company that makes and deliv- ers kits containing the ingredients for a range of dinner entrees, in 2014. Fresh Prep now has about 100 employees and serves 5,000 customers from Squamish to Abbotsford. NEW + IMpRovED WARRIoR SpoTlIgHT In the Chips Before co-founding meal-kit service Fresh Prep, Husein Rahemtulla played poker for a living. Now he plays for fun

• Cover