Image: Barnett Photography
One Big Table wants to change how people buy and eat their food.
In less than two weeks, a tiny grocery store built on some very big ideas will open its doors in Kelowna.
Filled with local and B.C.-produced cheeses, produce, meats and other grocery items, the small, “European-style” One Big Table grocery store aims not just to make local food more accessible, but to change the way Kelowna residents shop and eat.
Giulio Piccioli is a co-founder and director of the co-op grocery store.
He says he wants to tell the stories of where the food One Big Table sells comes from, connecting customers to the people that produce it, helping them appreciate the things they eat in a whole new way.
“What it comes down to for us is the idea of creating participation in the buying process for the consumer,” he says.
“When you know the person that has grown it, or made it, you are really choosing to buy that product, and in that way you are allowing the product to grow. You’re really becoming a co-producer… in a way that’s very different from when you go to the grocery store and you just pick something blindly off the shelves.”
Piccioli is a chef by trade, and originally hails from Italy. While his goal today is to change the conversations we have about food, it was something much different that originally brought him to Canada.
When he was about 20 years old, a lovestruck Piccioli followed a girl from Italy to Ontario.
“I was young. I really didn’t know left from right, or what love was, really,” he recalls.
The relationship didn’t work out, but Piccioli stayed in Canada, eventually hopping a train to B.C. where he began working in restaurants.
Image: L.G. Photography
A chef by trade, it didn’t take Piccioli long to grow dissatisfied “with the restaurant philosophy” that valued making money far more than creating a story and sharing the values of buying and eating local food.
That’s when he started the first iteration of One Big Table.
“To be honest, I didn’t know what it was I wanted to do, but I did know I wanted it to be something different from the restaurants [I worked at],” Piccioli explained.
In the beginning, the organization was simply a catering company. Piccioli would host dinners in farmer’s fields and snow-covered forests, mere metres away from the source of the food his guests were eating.
He served local ingredients and did everything he could to show his guests where the food they were eating came from, and tell them the stories behind it.
As he hosted more and more of those dinners, Piccioli began to realize all the ingredients he served we’re really hard to find, and it required a ton of effort to hit up each individual supplier to get them all.
He could bring those ingredients to a few dozen people at a time, a few times a year, with his special dinners, but he wanted to do more.
He believes the One Big Table grocery store will be that place.
“You don’t have 1,000 choices in front of you. There’s going to be one pasta, a few cheeses… we put a lot of time into selecting the best ingredients that I personally thought the Okanagan has to offer,” he says.
“You walk into the shop, you’re most likely going to find what you’re looking for, except it’s probably going to be small, it’s going to be artisan made, it’s going to taste really good … It’s really making not just the cost of the food, but the values of making it, part of the conversation.”
The space will also feature a small cafe, where customers can eat a meal prepared with the ingredients sold in store.
Image: L.G. Photography
Giulio Piccioli (left) and Christian Brandt (right)
The idea, Piccioli says, is that people can come in and watch a cook make them lunch. Then they can go and buy all the ingredients themselves to make the same meal at home.
One Big Table will even offer take-home instructions explaining exactly how to cook the meals, making it easier for people to eat well in their own homes.
When people realize they can eat delicious local food at home, they’re more likely to continue to support local producers.
“At some point we hope it’s going to grow and become how we purchase our food,” Piccioli says.
Right now, Piccioli and One Big Table co-founders Christian Brandt and Anne-Marie Cayer are putting the finishing touches on the shop’s physical location, which will officially open Sept. 7.
One Big Table sits at 1440 St Paul St, in the former home of The John Howard Society’s One Cup at a Time coffee shop.
The store will also continue many of the hiring practices the society used to staff the former coffee shop.
For more information, visit One Big Table online.
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