New Whitehorse food truck serves up sourdough, and skills training

What might look like a regular food truck is serving up more than lunch in Whitehorse this summer. 

The S.S. Culinary is a new social enterprise run by the Yukon Literacy Coalition (YLC). It aims at providing employment skills training, as well as turning a profit to fund additional community-based programming. 

"A lot of programming or job placements generally start in the food industry," said the food truck's operations manager, Mark Steudle. 

"So we thought it was a way that we can break into a market where we can offer employability skills in that specific industry, as well as teach them [participants] a little bit about entrepreneurship and owning their own business."

The project stems from the YLC's Three for Change program, formed in conjunction with the N.W.T. Literacy Council and Ilitaqsiniq (formerly known as Nunavut Literacy Council). The four-year program is aimed at developing and delivering skills-training opportunities, as well as developing social enterprises across the North. 

"Hopefully we can travel to other parts of the Yukon as well," said S.S. Culinary's project manager, Nava Taghvai.

"We're just dipping our toes into the beginning of this."  

A learning endeavour 

Sihyeon Kim arrived in Canada six months ago from Korea, where he worked as a music composer. Kim is managing the S.S. Culinary this summer, and believes the skills he has been developing in the truck could open the door to work in other industries. 

"I've been learning really a lot of things, because I've never experienced…the food industry in Korea," he said. "It's really a totally different experience."

Kim said that in addition to helping him develop food-industry skills, his time working in the truck has dramatically improved his English. 

"I'm a foodie, and I always like to learn something, so I think this is just my first step," he said. 

To Steudle, the development of literacy skills is inherent in the work experience offered by the S.S. Culinary. 

"Literacy itself is prevalent in all aspects of the truck, be it through the reading of a menu or even the development of a menu, and the recipes upward to the ability to talk to the customer about it," he said. 

YLC office administrator Jolene Walsh called the operation a "learning endeavour." 

"From learning sourdough to learning money to learning English — and learning how to create a menu that people will enjoy in Canada," she said, explaining that both current staff members are new Canadians. 

"They're picking up all kinds of new skills along the way."

The truck will remain open daily until October, when the profitable food truck season ends. Steudle hopes to then continue using the truck as a space for training and skills development, year-round.

"Hopefully we'll be able to use it as a circulation space so that we can have participants from various [YLC] programs come in for two weeks or a one-month period to learn the skills, practice the skills, and then exit into a new place of employment," he said. 

A focus on sourdough  

S.S. Culinary's current menu consists of several locally-sourced specialty items, including sourdough pancakes, sandwiches, smoothies and coffee. Steudle said the menu development process took nearly three months. 

"We started off using sourdough as kind of the base idea… to identify as something that was quite unique to the Yukon and something that most Yukoners can relate to," he said.   

Sourdough is naturally-leavened bread, meaning it does not require commercial yeast to rise. 

Steudle said the sourdough-themed menu has been redeveloped and upgraded over the course of the summer.

"The beautiful element, as a training space, is that we're constantly growing and trying to figure out what the market actually wants and needs — while keeping the idea of sourdough," he said.