Town Square Restaurant
July’s featured Chamber business is Town Square Restaurant, aptly named as it truly occupies a prime spot in the Village of Pemberton, smack dab in the middle of town and across from the Community Barn.
Town Square has four owners, Angela Bradbury, her partner in life Matt Prescott, also Mike Richman and Scott Schober. Angela is from Prince George, where she was a self-proclaimed, “tomboy” who enjoyed skateboarding and hacky sack. The Whistler lifestyle held a strong appeal for her and her sister had lived there for several years. In 2000, after a year in Whistler, she moved to Pemberton, where she came and went a few times over the years – always knowing Pemberton was where she wanted to raise her kids. Her long-term interest in cooking and baking, and her strong desire to be her own boss meant owning a restaurant was always in her future. Angela and her partner Matt have had a catering business for the last thirteen years, purchasing a food truck seven years ago. Angela worked with both Mike and Matt at the legendary Pony. When the opportunity to purchase a local landmark, the Chinese Restaurant came up, Angela couldn’t pass it up! She shares that, “owning the property is a future investment and owning the building meant we could completely make it our own. It was fun and a lot of hard work to completely renovate the restaurant.”
When asked what the biggest challenge to operating the business is Angela replied, ” The greatest difficulty of operating the business is managing the different staff and personalities. We all know finding staff in any industry right now is challenging and the rising cost of food is killing small businesses, but my, top priority is ensuring our staff are happy and taken care of. I am very fortunate to have a solid crew, front of house and back. Being a young restaurant that opened up at the most challenging time means we’ve had our moments, but treating each other with respect, having fun, and eating cookies has gotten us this far!”
The greatest reward for Angela is watching her staff kill it when the restaurant is full and a line up at the door. Even when exhausted after those shifts, in the end, they manage to smile and laugh about the ‘ass-kicking” but then tell each other how many compliments they received on the food, drinks and service. It’s also a great reward that Angela is able to employ all three of her kids. Lucas and Kayleigh work the line and Ashley is out front busing, but will soon graduate to serving. Owning a restaurant takes up a lot of time but Angela loves that she can spend time with her family there.
When asked what Angela would like people to know about Town Square her response is, “We went into this business together and our goal was to be the place locals want to hang out, and the place tourists heard about. We love our regulars and sometimes know what they will order before they sit down. When a tourist tells us how amazing the food is, how nice the decor and the service were amazing and wishes they had a similar restaurant in their area – it makes us feel great! We want people to know we look forward to the local growing season so we can source locally when available. We want people to feel at home in our space. We’ve watched our customer’s children grow over the last five years and even hired quite a few of them. Town Square is comfort and good times, a place to come after a long shift at work or when you want to celebrate a birthday or milestone.” Angela goes on to say, “I am fortunate to be where I am today. It has been a journey of hard work, long hours, time away from kids, poor diet choices and too much caffeine, but that’s what you sign up for in this industry – and hope it pays off. In my case, it has and I am so grateful.”
You can see Town Square’s incredible menu here – TownSquarePemberton.com
