Brewing business success:

Delany’s Coffee House wins Business of the Year honours.

Standing at the front of the room, Robin Delany seemed at a loss for words.

Just named Business of the Year by his peers in the West Vancouver Chamber of Commerce, Robin and his wife Jennifer, smiled broadly to the crowd.

“I was pleasantly surprised,” said Robin, owner of Delany’s Coffee House, after the awards dinner. “Jen and I did not expect it in light of the competition we had ... we were just thrilled to be acknowledged by the chamber and our peers.”

The Delanys started down the road of coffee house owners 15 years ago back when “Starbucks was the only player” in town, Robin explained.

While the North Shore family originally hoped to start their coffee house empire north of the Lions Gate Bridge, Robin said a lack of quality locations meant he had to go across the Burrard Inlet, opening doors to their Denman Street location in 1993.

“The truth is because we are a North Shore-based family we would have preferred to have our first store on the North Shore,” Robin said.

Four Delanys have since cropped up on the North Shore, each strategically located in one of the community centres at Edgemont, Dundarave, Park Royal and in Lynn Valley.

“We’re not looking for the traditional spot like Starbucks does on Marine Drive, we’re looking for a legitimate community like Edgemont and Dundarave,” Robin said, adding he hopes

the coffee house “enriches the lifestyle on the North Shore.”

Besides being ideally located in a community, Robin added he likes the stores to be involved too.

His three sons have all worked in the business, and two continue to, and Robin regularly donates coffee or funds to community organizations such as the Avalon Women’s Centre and Rotary.

“We wanted to be simply the best coffee house around,” Robin said, adding, “if you are the best, prosperity will often follow that.”

Other nominees in Business of the Year were Absolute Spa, Busy Bee, Harmony Pacific Projects, Heritage Law, Hollyburn House, Salmon House on the Hill and West Van Vacuum.

dpi@northshoreoutlook.com

A sea of success:

Megan Sewell wins young entrepreneur award as GM of family’s Horseshoe Bay marina.

With an 11-month-old daughter at home, Megan Sewell admits that there are difficulties for a young woman taking on a big role in the family business.

“It’s a challenge. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t,” says the general manager of West Vancouver’s Sewell’s Marina. “But it’s a fun challenge.”

At 31, Sewell was recently named the Young Entrepreneur of the Year at the West Vancouver Chamber of Commerce’s 2009 President’s Dinner.

It was an award that shocked the young mother.

“It was just an honour to be nominated, there were some great candidates in that field.”

Since taking over the GM position at the Horseshoe Bay marina in 2003, Sewell has been busy at the helm, taking the business from a primarily sport fishing charter destination to an ocean-based business offering many more and diverse experiences.

“Most people when they hear Sewell’s Marina think two things: a marina where they can moor their boats or fishing,” Sewell jokes.

And while the business might have primarily catered to those into sport fishing in the past, that’s been slowly changing since the 70s.

“We’ve diversified with the times,” Sewell reports, adding now, sport fishing only represents about 20 per cent of their business.

The marina now offers tours and corporate team-building events, she says, describing her job as “getting the word out about the different experiences on Howe Sound.”

Recently, Sewell has introduced a partnership with the Boathouse Restaurant and Harbour Air Seaplanes to offer a tour and dinner package for those visiting Vancouver.

“In a time with a lot of challenges ... it’s been great to partner with some strong partners,” Sewell said.

Outside of her GM job and her busy family schedule, Sewell also volunteers her time as a board member on the West Vancouver Chamber and as a speaker talking about marketing and the tourism industry at Capilano University.

Other nominees in the Young Entrepreneur category were Derek Archer (Brown’s Social House), Joe Heilman (Heilman Renovations Ltd.), and Sean Abadian (Sutton Group West Coast Realty).

dpi@northshoreoutlook.com

Eco-friendly mall:

Park Royal earns Green Business of the Year award.

When Brian Maule, property manager for Park Royal Shopping Centre, accepted the Green Business of the Year award he was doing so for the employees of the shopping centre.

“We think the recognition is fantastic,” Maule said. “It’s the recognition of the efforts our employees have put forward.”

Instead of just injecting cash to make the mall more green and sustainable, Maule explained, the shopping centre brought its staff together to form a committee to find it solutions.

“That’s where we established our green goals with the help of a consultant,” Maule said.

That was 18 months ago, and the changes have been many. But more could be on the way.

It’s that work that helped the mall be selected as the greenest business by the West Vancouver Chamber of Commerce this year.

According to Maule, while the sustainability movement has been big in the property development world, it has always been a tougher sell in the retail world, “because it’s so much more complicated than a single-use development.”

A shopping centre with its diverse retailers have different needs, some stores might need more electricity, others more water, for example.

Some changes at Park Royal have included renovated washrooms to save water, the replacement of nearly 3,000 light fixtures to be more energy efficient, and starting a pilot project with Metro Vancouver to find out how to effectively implement a recycling program in a mall.

“We’re very proud to be the shopping centre where this is happening at,” Maule said.

What could be the jewel in the crown for Park Royal, however, is still to come.

Maule said the mall has set a goal to ban all non-recyclable plastic shopping bags by April 2011.

“We know that plastic bags aren’t good. We know that a number of well-respected retailers ... have a program to try and get people to use reusable bags,” Maule said. “What we’re aiming for is to get all of our tenants to eliminate the bad, non-recyclable bags that are just bad for the environment.”

Other nominees in the Most Green Business category were Bean Around the World, British Pacific Properties, Caliente Fashions, Complement Health Care, and Yoko’s Haute Coiffure.

dpi@northshoreoutlook.com

Top of the hill:

Cypress Mountain GM Linda Swain voted business person of the year.

Twenty-five years ago, Linda Swain was just a ski school instructor at the newly created resort at Cypress.

“It was a bit of a career move,” Swain admits, “from the mortgage industry.”

But a life-long skier, Swain, then in her late 20s, wanted to work on the ski hill which she figured had lots of potential.

That decision turned out well for her.

On Wednesday, June 10, Swain, now the general manager of Cypress Mountain, was recognized by the West Vancouver Chamber of Commerce as the Business Person of the Year.

“I’m humbled ... very honoured,” Swain told The Outlook. “I came through the ranks 25 years ago at the ski school, I’ve worked almost every department in the mountain. I know it like the back of my hand.”

Swain, only one of three female GMs in the ski industry in North America, played an integral role helping the growth of the mountain resort go from 80,000 visits in 1984 to 500,000 in 2008.

“We have grown immensely in the 25 years,” Swain said, adding that growth has also been in the community since Cypress is a major employee of North Shore residents.

Besides the growth that Swain has helped oversee, she’s also “witnessed the growth of the skiing industry in Western Canada.”

But all of it will pale in comparison to Swain’s upcoming position as GM of the resort during the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics.

“I was right there from the start lobbying for the Olympics,” Swain said, adding she views obtaining Olympic Venue status for Cypress as one of her career highlights.

Also nominated in the Best Business Person category were Alf Haley (Blenz Coffee), Brigitte and Kamer Karakas (Karakas Real Estate), Shannon Walker (Walker Group).

dpi@northshoreoutlook.com

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