Bonsai Bagels

For more details follow https://www.instagram.com/bonsaibagels/ or call (250) 307-3836

Who We Are and What We Do

My name is Loren Letourneau. I was born and raised in Vernon, BC, then moved
away as soon as I graduated from Seaton. It’s been 23 years and I’m ready to
come home.

I grew up in the classical music community, moved away and got an arts
degree, bounced around the world, got an art education degree, bounced some
more and taught art in the lower mainland, then abroad. I’ve always loved food
(I mean, really, who doesn’t?), and over the course of my travels, I’ve been
lucky enough to enjoy a wide range of gustatorial delights.

Amongst the various delicacies, baked goods hit a magic sweet spot for me.
And of those, the rightfully famous Montreal bagels do a lot with a little. Hand-formed,
wood-fire baked, boiled in honey-water, and rolled in sesame seeds, they are
crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside. They are an elevated everyday pleasure.
So, naturally, I wanted to bring them home.

You could say, I’ve come full circle.

Guiding Principles

At Bonsai Bagels, we apply a measure of Community, Artistry, and Transparency to all of our decisions.

Community

We are committed to our shop, our employees, our neighbours and our community. This means that we pay our employees well, that we provide benefits where we can, that we give them opportunities to grow and contribute, and that they share in our successes. This means that we look out for our neighbours, that we care about our neighbourhood, that we try to build connections and consensus, and that share our successes. This means that wherever possible we buy local, that we seek to support local initiatives, that we share what we can, and that we’re committed to our home city.

Artistry

We are committed to doing things right and to a cycle of perpetual development. We will be constantly refining our recipes and our baking conditions to bring you a phenomenal bagel. We devote time every week to personal and professional development. We are committed to leading healthy and fulfilled lives, and to building a healthy and contributing business. Also, and somewhat more directly, we are committed to building inroads in the arts community and supporting it wherever possible.

Transparency

Transparency is foundational to all of our decisions. Do you want to know how much the bagel costs to produce? Do you want to know where we got our wheat or how much we pay our employees? Are you curious about our financials or the plans that we have for our futures? We will not be perfect, but we will try to put anything and everything that’s in our heads or in our books online for you to peruse. With that comes the invitation that if you can’t find something that you are looking for, let us know and we will try to put it online. We believe that by being explicit about our sharing, we’re less likely to run into trouble – it’s a lot harder to deny a problem when it’s being reported on publicly. The flip side, is that you also get to share in all of our successes, no matter how small we might take them to be.