An industrial stretch of East Vancouver is about to land a lot more kitchen commissary space with the coming of Coho Commissary to 1370 East Georgia Street.

The first thing I imagined when I walked into the 10,000 sqft construction space yesterday afternoon to meet up with owners Andrew Barnes and Amrit Maharaj was how good and weird it will eventually smell. When it – the third and largest Coho outpost (they also operate shared kitchens on the North Shore and behind Andina Brewing on Powell St.) – launches before Christmas, the massive, impossibly high-ceilinged space will play host to an assortment of disparate culinary endeavours in need of commissary space, everything from food trucks and first-timers in the incubation stage to veteran restaurant groups in need of a place to boil and bubble.

Joining us on the walk-through was Jennifer Chan, the company’s Head of Marketing & Retail. She will be overseeing the rollout of the in-house cafe, which should prove an interesting challenge. She tells me the 16-seater will incorporate many of the client-prepared foods into the cafe menu (as well as espresso drinks from local roaster Elysian Coffee). To wit, if one of the stations is churning out really good hummus or novel cookies on site, the cafe will be a means of introduce the product to the public. (The hours of the cafe – which can/will double as rentable event space – will be 7:30am to 3:30pm to start.)

As you can see from the images above and below, there’s still a lot of work to be done before Coho’s stable of clients start cooking, but they’re confident they’ll be good-to-go before at the start of December. I’ll try to swing back in for another look around then, but in the meantime take a look inside…

Coho Collective & Coho Coffee

Neighbourhood: East Vancouver

1370 East Georgia St.

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