Vancouver Magazine
Flaky, Fluffy and Freaking Delicious: Vancouver’s Top Fry Bread and Bannock
The Best Gelato in Canada Was Made in a Hotel Room (and You Can Get it Now in Kitsilano)
Purdys Put a Real Bunny in a Mini Chocolate Factory for Their 2023 Easter Campaign
Naked Malt Blended Malt Scotch Whisky Celebrates Versatility and Spirit
A $13 Wine You Can Age in Your Cellar
A Radical Idea: Celebrate Robbie Burns With These 3 Made-in-BC Single Malts
5 Things to Do in Vancouver This Week (March 13-19)
Looking for a Hobby? Here’s 8 Places in Vancouver You Can Pick Up a New Skill
Extra, Extra! The Let’s Hear It Music Festival Is Here
What It’s Like to Get Lost on a Run With a Pro Trail Runner
8 Things to Do in Abbotsford (Even If It’s Pouring Rain)
Explore the Rockies by Rail with Rocky Mountaineer
The Future of Beauty: How One Medical Aesthetics Clinic is Changing the Game
Before Hibernation Season Ends: A Round-Up of the Coziest Shopping Picks
On the Rise: Adhere To’s Puffer Jackets Are Designed With the Future in Mind
Richard Jaffray was surfing the other day with a talented 60-year-old buddy down in Santa Monica, where he’s got a little condo. “That’s where I want to be in 10 years,” he says now in the private dining room of Cactus Club Cafe’s Coal Harbour flagship, built last year at a cost of $7.5 million. Surfing more he means, and better, though he has other ambitions too, like doubling the number of Cactuses (after a quarter-century he’s at 25), expanding across the country and into the U.S., and maybe making executive chef Rob Feenie a truly household name with CC-branded ready-to-eat meals. “But not everything on the menu,” he cautions. “We’d still want people to come into the restaurants.”
Since he opened his first in 1988 (on Pemberton Ave. in North Van-it’s still there), a lot of people have done just that, which makes him and silent partner Stan Fuller very happy. The two met when Jaffray, 19, was a waiter at Fuller’s Earls, living out of a sailboat-a step up from his car and ultimately the collateral for his first venture, West Broadway’s Café Cucamongas. Fuller (and the bankers) saw something in the confident Calgarian and took a chance on his vision of a casual spot for sandwiches, trendy frozen yogurt (he thinks he had the country’s first Yogen Früz-style machine, inspired by a story in Entrepreneur magazine), and-just nascent-gourmet cappuccinos.
The scale has changed-25 employees at the first Cactus have grown to 3,000 today-but the careful mix of sophistication, comfort, and quality have held steady through the years. There have been missteps (three Alberta locations had to close for the sake of the chain), but consistent, monumental growth made Jaffray the judges’ clear choice for this year’s lifetime achievement award.
