Theresa’s is run as a co-op and delivers great value to its local customers
Mia Stainsby
Sun
Owners of Theresa’s Co-op restaurant on Commercial Drive. Jeff Macleod (left), Christina Lee and Jacob Aginsky. The homestyle food comes in large portions on mismatched plates. Photograph by: Bill Keay, Vancouver Sun
THERESA’S
1260 Commercial Dr., 604-676-1868. www.theresaseatery.com. Open 7 days a week. 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesday to Sunday; to 2 p.m. Monday and Tuesday.
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The lesson of recent months is that corporate greed isn’t very pretty. The opposite business model is Theresa’s, a busy little boho cafe on Commercial Drive. It’s stoked by socialist ideals, and profit does not rise to the top like cream — it spreads out horizontally.
Founder Jacob Aginsky decided to run it as a cooperative (remember another one, Isadora’s on Granville Island?) and give great value to local customers. The kitchen (right there, behind the counter) uses healthy, local, organic ingredients and, considering that, the prices are remarkably low — $4 to $8 for all-day breakfast dishes, $5 for lunchier salads and sandwiches ($7.50 for a salad/sandwich combo.)
Profit margins might be slim considering increases in costs of organics, but the restaurant makes it back in volume and the buzz that comes with the thrum. Sometimes, if a customer hogs a seat too long, staff might come by and ask: “You gonna take a walk soon?” Aginsky says they’re always funny about it and only one patron thought they were being rude in the 21/2 years they’ve been open.
“I’m as proud of this place as any of the albums I’ve done,” says Aginsky, who’s also an in-demand pianist for about a dozen bands.
“It’s about incentivizing people. They have extra reason to put their all into the place,” he says. His wife, by the way, runs Eastside Yoga Studio in the neighbourhood, also based on the co-op model.
The homestyle food comes in large portions on mismatched plates on mismatched tables; dishes are named after local streets. The popular gluten-free orange and ginger pancakes started off as ho cakes, pancakes from the deep south in the U.S., typically fried in bacon grease. “It comes with a defibrillator,” says Aginsky who’d tried them on his travels. His version, however, isn’t larded up.
French toast (made with multi-grain bread from a local bakery) is stuffed with cream cheese and strawberry reduction. “It’s kind of like having cheesecake,” he says. The coffee is fair trade, organic, and bought from the coffee roaster next door.
No one in the co-op is a trained chef, although Aginsky went to cooking school in Vancouver until he had to drop out to go on tour. He notes that musicians talk about food constantly, perhaps because they’re on the road. “In my experience, every single musician is obsessed with food and finances,” he says.
Aginsky’s other obsession is quiz games. When he spent time in New York (playing at the Blue Note), he loved to go to “quiz nights.” Piqued that he couldn’t find an equivalent here, he started one at Theresa’s. (At 6 p.m. the first Wednesday of every month.)
Teams have to answer questions like “What grows faster? A mountain or toenails?” (Toenails.) Winning teams get free breakfasts.
“The business,” he says, “supports my principles but it’s proof that you can run something successful in a capitalist context with socialist ideals.”
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