Kristen Hilderman

1. Keep Jelly of the Month Club certificates on hand for all of those bonuses you won’t be giving out this year. 2. When face-to-face seems too excruciating, fire off an email padded with emoji. 3. Don’t ruin someone’s Friday by telling them they didn’t get the promotion—tell them on Monday when...

When Cartems Donuts Inc. opened its first pop-up store on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, the gourmet pastry shop routinely sold out of product by mid-afternoon, with customers waiting in line for upwards of 30 minutes to buy $3 doughnuts. It’s easy to doubt the future of a company pinning its livelihood...

If the beer or wine you’re enjoying at a wedding this summer tastes suspiciously subpar, you can raise your glass to the province of B.C. for finally amending its antiquated liquor laws. Allowing hosts of “special occasion licensed” events to serve homemade beer and wine is one of seven recommendations...

When American online shoe company Zappos pulled out of the Canadian market in May 2011, entrepreneur Sean Clark leapt at the opportunity to start his own business and become Canada's major online footwear retailer. “We started the company hoping to pick up where [Zappos] left off, but the difference is...

The scent of freshly ground beans emanating from the coffee counter inside Lukes General Store in Vancouver's Chinatown Space Lab competes with potent smells from other products—such as $13 ginger mint toothpaste—lining the adjacent brick wall. The curious drugstore/coffee shop was launched by Calgary-based entrepreneur Gareth Lukes, who took a...

Amid a $12-million renovation of its lobby and 900 West Restaurant and Bar, the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver has opened a pop-up restaurant on its 15th floor, reviving the heyday of the Panorama Roof restaurant, which served as a Vancouver hotspot for dining, music and dancing from 1939 until mid-1996. Hotel general...

This year’s “theme country” at the Vancouver International Wine Festival marked a return to what executive director Harry Hertscheg calls the homeland of wine: France. “A lot of grapes that grow internationally—like Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Chardonnay—all those grapes originally come from France,” says Hertscheg. “They have a very codified system...

You could say Prince George has a reputation problem—partly stemming from the unfortunate title “Most Dangerous City in Canada” bestowed upon it by Maclean’s magazine in 2010, 2011 and 2012. According to Heather Oland, CEO of Initiatives Prince George, the city’s economic development corporation, one-sided press is the plight of...

1. Paint rain clouds on the office windows so you don’t feel like you’re missing out. 2. Ask your boss if you can shift your regular 9-5 to a slightly earlier 6-2, so you can capture a portion of the afternoon sun (even if it means being exhausted). 3. Move meetings outside.

Vancouver Airport Authority has begun construction on an open-air designer outlet mall that promises to be a regional draw for locals and tourists alike. “We think this is an opportunity to repatriate some of those shoppers who are spending money in the U.S.,” says the authority’s senior vice-president of business...

This year Bard celebrates its 25th anniversary. What’s in store? We held back A Midsummer Night’s Dream for this season. It’s such a triumphant, magical sort of play. We started with Dream 25 years ago and we’ll do it again. Dean Paul Gibson will direct it; he directed it for us...

Highly rated boutique hotel Opus, located in Vancouver’s swanky Yaletown neighbourhood, will be adding another B.C. location in the fall of 2017. The new property, named Opus Hotel Versante, will be located in Richmond—minutes away from the Vancouver International Airport and the Canada Line’s Bridgeport Station—and marks the arrival of...