A young entrepreneur is hoping to encourage café goers to check out the small businesses using a passport he created and despite the common trend to rely on technology, this idea doesn’t rely on having a phone.
The Saskatchewan Café Passport contains 95 cafés to try in most areas of the province, reaching as far as La Ronge in the north, Melfort, East End in the South, and Esterhazy in the East.
Spencer Campbell is the owner of the Café Passport who got the original idea from the Starbucks passport and a similar concept in the United States.
“The whole purpose of it is to encourage people to support local businesses. Over the last few years, a lot of businesses have been struggling so I wanted to encourage people to get out,” Campbell told CTV News.
Campbell started in Alberta first and then brought it to Saskatchewan as well as other cities in the country. There’s even a Canada wide passport now. They all include a map which show the cafes at a glance and where they are in a particular region.
There are many more locations in major cities in the province because Campbell says, there are just more cafés there, but this listing also has many represented outside of centres. La Ronge is the farthest north with listings in Melfort, East End in the south and Esterhazy in the east.
“We have a wide range. Some are bakeries, that have coffee options. Owners who reached out and said we’d like to be a part of it. We do have more on the bakery side, but everyone has coffee options,” he says.
The 24-year-old entrepreneur had requests from customers to make it an app and not just rely on the booklet.
“I don’t want it to be another app. Having a hard copy where I can go to café and write about my experience feels a bit better so that’s the direction on why it’s a hard copy. Also, it’s an awesome gift this way,” he said.
Shananigans Coffee and Dessert Bar in Prince Albert is one of the cafés listed and according to the owner Jeannette Kindzerski, they’ve already had some people come in with the passport. They are new customers who didn’t know they existed.
“I’m not where all the other restaurants are like the malls, I’m off the beat,” Kindzerski told CTV News.
She admits, her restaurant is well known in Prince Albert, but relies on word-of-mouth for others to find her.
“I pride myself on good food and good service all my life and I’m a hands-on chef. I keep everything real which means I make everything from scratch,” she said.
Those are the qualities she hopes get out to a wider audience with the Café Passport.
Campbell has sold 500 of the booklets so far in the province, saying he updates it often if a restaurant closes or new ones open.
“People are on top of it, it’s very community driven. I constantly get messages from people saying, I hey went to this café, it is awesome and you should include it. I noticed it’s not in my copy,” he says.
He’s just added a the Pizza Passport and hopes both concepts encourage customers to support small business as well as getting out and discovering some hidden gems around the province that they may not have considered.
The passports are available on their website for $19.
