The team behind The Mackenzie Room and Say Mercy! are opening a third restaurant this summer after taking over the old Casa Verde space in East Vancouver.

The 1,450 sqft restaurant, dubbed Collective Goods, is currently coming together at 3532 Commercial Street, where I recently met for a walk-through with GM Shiva Reddy and co-owners chef Sean Reeve, Andrew Jameson and Antonio Cayonne. Together, the group detailed the hybrid concept as part grocery, part wine shop and part bistro that will be open day and night selling everything from bottled sauces and bubbly from the retail side of the operation, and complete meal kits and fully menu’ed table service from the restaurant side. They’re aiming for a June launch.

It’s a business plan that was clearly conceived in a pandemic and mid-wifed by the myriad new realities that have given restaurateurs novel opportunities to not only sustain going concerns but also better and more fully serve the communities in which they operate. It’s very clever. Necessary, too.

The interior was still very much a work in progress on my visit but from what I saw I think we can anticipate something white, bright and woody. I spied stacks of butcher block table tops and green/blue cushioned chairs tucked away in the arched retail and wine nook, and didn’t find it difficult to imagine the four bar height seats at the open kitchen bar that Reeve was excited about.

I didn’t ask many questions about the menu (it’s too early) except to confirm that it wouldn’t be ‘bistro’ in the Parisian sense of that word, but rather a more casual, familiar expression of what we’ve seen from the group at The Mackenzie Room and Say Mercy! to date, which is to say chef-driven, Euro-ish, local and seasonal, tight but unfussy and real easy on the eyes. Jameson confirmed this straight up, saying he saw the new restaurant as a “casual version of The Mackenzie Room”.

So there we are. Another something to genuinely look forward to! Take a closer look inside…

Collective Goods

Neighbourhood: East Vancouver

3532 Commercial St.

604-757-0306

WEBSITE