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Concession search still on

The Vancouver Park Board hopes a Japadog-owned food truck will temporarily meet park goers’ appetites on weekends at Trout Lake after the longtime concession closed just before Canada Day.
concession

The Vancouver Park Board hopes a Japadog-owned food truck will temporarily meet park goers’ appetites on weekends at Trout Lake after the longtime concession closed just before Canada Day.

The concession, typically open from April until September, closed because the operator retired a month ago, according to Vancouver Park Board communications manager Margo Harper. She said a replacement is in the works.

“We’ve put the word out through our concession operator network,” said Harper, meaning the board is both advertising to those who are running concessions as well as other operators who may be interested.

As many as 13 concessions in Vancouver’s parks and beaches are contracted to third party operators, said Gordon Barber, the park board’s manager of revenue services. However, the park board refused, based on what it says are privacy conditions, to release a list of which locations were run by third parties when requested by the Courier.

Vancouver’s park concessions have seen numerous changes in the last decade. One of the most prominent changes was at Kitsilano Beach Park where a simple beachfront concession stand morphed into the Watermark restaurant and then into The Boathouse, all within the last 10 years.

In July 2013, the park board brought forth another change in its Local Food Action Plan to provide locally sourced food to its park and beach visitors. The plan is still in process according to the City of Vancouver’s website, as the board hopes to fully integrate local food into the system by 2018.

Earlier this year, Green Party park board commissioner Michael Wiebe proposed a motion to get rid of bottled water at concession stands to reduce waste. The park board rejected the idea but the motion sparked a discussion on installing additional water fountains in parks.

As for whether concession closures may be a trend beach and park goers will have to deal with in the near future, it could depend on the success of these ongoing transformations and how well the public receives it.

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