5 Local Companies Satisfying Your Soup Cravings

Soup is hot! We introduce you to five B.C. companies that make the stuff from scratch so you don’t have to

The Stock Market

Launched in 1986 by Georges and Joanne Lefebvre, The Stock Market on Granville Island is Vancouver’s original small-batch soup kitchen making soups, stocks and sauces. Ashley Jongsma and Ferney Osorio purchased it in 2010, opening a UBC shop in September 2015. Using fresh, local, seasonal ingredients with no additives, preservatives or MSG, the kitchen produces four flavours a day to meet demand for soups sold in packages or served hot at the counter. During the winter it makes 300 to 400 litres of soup a day, with chicken noodle the most popular year round.

Hot soup $5.25-8.50; packaged soup $8.50-12

Harvest Community Foods

Launched in 2012 by chef Andrea Carlson, who also owns the Main Street restaurant Burdock & Co., Harvest Community Foods is a small Chinatown-Strathcona grocery store with a soup counter. The broths are made in-house, including the bone broth sold for takeaway from the retail store; the ramen and udon noodles are made locally at Toko; and seasonal organic greens come from urban farms and small producers. The ingredients and dishes vary depending on seasonal availability of the local produce.

Vegetable soup $10.95, meat soup $11.95, eat-in or take-out

Kits Kitchen

Joni Lind and Amy Kizaki launched Kits Kitchen in 2014 to produce soups, spreads and bone broths made with locally sourced organic ingredients and no gluten, dairy, refined sugars, additives or preservatives. Available in more than 30 stores from Vancouver to Whistler and Victoria including Urban Fare, SPUD and juiceries, soups can also be purchased online. Flavours include butternut squash with ginger and mushroom with cracked pepper. Most soups are $8.50 for 500 mL in a returnable glass jar or $13 for a litre in a freezable pouch.

Home delivery once a week, Vancouver only, $8

Liquids + Solids

Producing soups, stews and chilis under the house brand SoupEtc for stores such as Whole Foods, Liquids + Solids also has two cafés in Strathcona and South Granville. Soups are made in small batches from all-natural mostly local ingredients and no preservatives. Proteins are organic and/or free-run or free-range. There are 11 meat flavours, two seafood, 14 poultry and 19 meat-free.

Sold in 700 mL pouches at stores; eat-in or take-out at cafés, $3.95 for 10 ounces, $4.95 for 14 ounces 

The Soup Meister

A chef from Germany, Ralf Dauns opened his soup business, The Soup Meister at North Vancouver’s Lonsdale Quay market in 1995. “I didn’t want to open a restaurant because I didn‘t want to open at night,” he says. “Plus I always enjoyed making soups and stock sauces.” He makes 150 to 180 different products, but best sellers are chicken noodle, Italian wedding, mulligatawny and Boston clam chowder.

Hot soups including tax and a bun start at about $5.90 for 12 ounces, $7.85 for 24 ounces; cold soups for take-out average $4.25 for 16 ounces, $8.50 for 32 ounces