Meet Chef Thompson Tran, owner, and chef at Wooden Boat Food Co., located in Kitchener, Ontario. Chef Tran is a pioneer in the local food landscape in Waterloo Region, supporting local sustainable options with high-quality service. Tran started out as a teacher in music and food in Vancouver, and worked in many high-end restaurants in the Vancouver food scene. With a passion for both cooking and sustainability, Tran views his position in the food industry as an opportunity to supercharge the industry with a thoughtful, sustainable, impactful approach to food transparency and is without a doubt a leader in leveraging the wider community to breed successful change.
Wooden Boat Food Company prides itself on empowering their consumers to make informed choices through patron and customer engagement. WBF started out as a ‘ghost kitchen’, meaning that take-out was their main source of food provision, and transformed into a full-service restaurant thanks to a growing demand for both their food and ethos. Transparency of both product and process is a key characteristic of WBF, and customers are encouraged to engage with staff to learn about where their food is coming from, and how the processes are founded in transformative sustainability, presenting and facilitating knowledge through authentic conversation and chit-chat while food is prepped, cooked, and enjoyed.
