Edible Flours prepares to open Vancouver’s first vegan retail bakery

A year ago, Paul Briggs and Alli Neville started up Edible Flours, a Vancouver bakery that makes and delivers vegan and gluten-free baked goods to order and sells them at farmers markets.

Now, the Kitsilano couple is preparing to take their business to the next level, by opening the first all-vegan retail bakery in the Vancouver area.

Briggs told the Straight that they plan to open their Edible Flours storefront at the beginning of March.

“We’re obviously a bit nervous, because no one’s done it before, so we don’t know whether it’s going to work or not,” Briggs said today (February 14) by phone. “But obviously we started small, and we’ve had some really positive feedback over the last year for our delivery stuff. So, we decided it was worth the shot.”

The bakery will be located in a 600-square-foot space at 2280 West Broadway, between Vine and Yew streets.

According to Briggs, they’re going for a “living room and kitchen atmosphere” with some seating.

“It’s a very open-concept, small, little spot that we found,” Briggs said. “It’s kind of perfect for what we want to do.”

Everything Edible Flours bakes is vegan—meaning it contains no dairy, eggs, honey, or other animal products—and much of it is gluten-, soy-, and sugar-free.

Briggs noted that, aside from vegans, they cater to people who suffer from lactose intolerance or other food hypersensitivities.

He said customers will find brownies, cakes, cookies, cupcakes, loaves, and muffins on offer when they walk into the bakery.

“We’ve had a million and one requests for bread,” Briggs said. “But we’re not going there at the moment, because we’re just trying to do certain things well. I don’t want to do everything averagely, if that makes sense.”

You can follow Stephen Hui on Twitter at twitter.com/stephenhui.