One of our favourite street food carts, Re-Up BBQ, is opening a brick and mortar location at the brand new River Market in New Westminster early in the new year. Co-owner Lindsay Ferguson gives us the exclusive skinny in three parts:

1. Counter-service BBQ restaurant with a much extended menu compared to our food carts. We’ll have our sandwiches, but also ribs, sides, and eventually biscuits and chicken. We’re not going to be a fancy restaurant, but we want to serve the best BBQ in town. The counter will also be home to a soda stand where we will sell homemade fruit sodas and colas at a higher level than we do at the carts.
2. Deli: We have already started selling our house-smoked bacon and seasonal turkeys. These and other “to-go” items will be available at our service counter.
3. Very visible and interactive prep kitchen where people can see every aspect of the BBQ process (even though its slow). We want our customers to see bacon brining, pork coming out of the smoker, us shredding meat and so on. Within a year, we hope to organize BBQ classes and bacon curing classes held in our kitchen.
Finally (and here’s the kicker), Food carts are not cash-cows, and we are low on the dough to get a project like this off the ground. So we are kickstarting a “come in out of the rain” campaign where friends and fans receive lucrative benefits for believing in us.

Full details on their “come in out of the rain” memberships here.