 I remember waking up because I could hear Jake running up the stairs in his boots which is a weird son-in-law's but his face disappeared in front of me like this and he said, Fergie's is on fire, do you want to come say goodbye? By far my favorite time of the day is brunch, right in between breakfast and lunch and a glass of mimosa. Today I'll be bringing you to Fergie's Cafe, an hour drive from downtown Vancouver in the heart of Squamish where we get to dine in this beautiful architecture, the stunning mountain views, and the serene sound of the backyard river. Let's go behind the scenes to check out their secret sauce. Fergie's Cafe is located about an hour's drive north of downtown Vancouver in the scenic area of Squamish Valley known for its stunning wilderness beauty and many outdoor activities. They open for brunch every day from 9 a.m to 3 p.m and their main clientele are those looking for a fun day trip away from the city, those looking for a truly unique brunch experience, or those staying at the Attach Sun Wolf Riverside Resort. Thanks for having me, Jess. Hi, very welcome. This is a beautiful place, definitely a true hidden gem, mountains, rivers, and a beautiful architect. Tell me the concept behind Fergie's. Well Fergie's has been here a long time before us so Jake and I, that's my husband, we often feel like we are the custodians of a very magical place and so when we came here we wanted to sort of bring back some of its former glory, which we started with the restaurant, opening the restaurant with just a little blue shack, and just people loving coming here, the walnut tree here, the lawns, the river, the mountains. So I heard there was a flood and it completely burnt down. The restaurant burnt down, yeah, to the ground. This is completely rebuilt. This is the rebuild, yeah. So it's been a real passion project, but it felt like for the first time Jake and I could really put stampar identity on this place a little bit. Everything you see here is designed and is built around the natural world. So the whole building, you can see points straight at Mount Alpha, and we were very keen with raising it up here that you could now see the river and enjoy the river views. So it was sort of about bringing our own personal design and style to the place, whilst at the same time just absolutely almost building a temple to just love this environment. There's a particular expression that Jake and I recognize, which is the person who came to the old Fergie, and they're just sort of like... You know what really blows me away is not just everything here, but the food. Like, I was really surprised. I'm like, this is like downtown core five-star quality food. Yes. And you started with a smoker. We did, which was true. Tell me about the smoker. Well, we gave ourselves the most ridiculously low budget. You're going to be horrified, Wilson, when I tell you what our budget for equipment was. It was five thousand dollars to kit out a commercial kitchen, and so we were down at an auction and there was a smoker there. We had no intention of buying it, and then the bidding started, and you know, they talk so fast you can barely keep up. And then everything stopped. It was like in slow motion. And Jake and I were like, what's happened? What's happened? Nobody was bidding on the smoker. And I was like, we should just get it. He's like, no, we don't want a smoker. We want the fried punch. We want the this. We want the this. But nobody's bidding. We're at an auction. In the end, I said, we should do it. And I elbowed him. Jake's hand shot up, and then there was a moment, and then Jake said, I think we just bought a smoker. So we did for five hundred bucks. So it was a good investment. And then it just shaped our entire menu. So then we were doing salmon, and we're doing pork, and we do brisket, and we smoke our own bacon. We don't, we don't buy it as bacon. That's the dish I had. Can we meet Jake, and then can you show us the other scenes? Absolutely. Yeah, please. Let's go. Let's go check him out. Okay. Now when it comes to the menu, Fergie's Cafe follows this trend set by the building exterior, and it's definitely not what you would expect from a restaurant out in the middle of the wilderness. Jake and Jess have been able to create an incredible high-end brunch menu based around delicious smoked meat and fresh local ingredients. But while you would expect such a specialty place to have high prices, Fergie's has an average order price of only $25, making it one of the go-to brunch spots in all of British Columbia. Wilson, this is Jake. Hey, Wilson. He's my husband, and also, he's also the cook in the family. Cook in the family, beautiful. Once upon a time. You're going to show me some of the behind the scenes? Yeah, come take a look in the kitchen. All right, awesome. So head back here. So obviously, this is pretty different to what we had in the original blue shack, but we're good here now. I think we're going to show you our pulled pork hash. Beautiful, and please tell me a little bit more about this kitchen. Basically, you know, we keep things local, sustainable. We do everything from first principle. So what you're going to see here is our pulled pork, which we smoke in the house, we grab in the house, our barbecue sauce is made in the house, but everything, we know what goes into everything because it's all done in here. Wow. Is that why it's so authentic and so good? I think so, yeah. I think so. I was blown away by how great the food is here. Well, it's awesome, and that's kind of part of the charm here. You come out to the middle of the bush and you don't really know what you're going to accept, and then... Yeah, exactly. That's exactly how I felt. Yeah, beautiful. And that's, yeah, slow cooked, 16 hours overnight. That's what'll get you. And the whole valley smells of it each night. So everyone just comes in like, yo, Jake. We know the smoke is going. Oh my God, it's so tiny. It's so good. Yeah, and that's smoky flavor. So the specialty about this kitchen, when you rebuild it, is the sustainability factor. Yeah, exactly. So like a massive piece when it comes to a kitchen is the amount of air you have to turn over to people, this like smoke and steam going in and out. And with that air, you have to heat and cool it, but we actually have no active heating in this building. So do you guys want to warm in or show it? Yes, please, show us. So the air comes into the kitchen through these huge ducts up here and then gets sucked out of the hood. But normally you just pull the air from outside, but in order for us to achieve our cooling in the kitchen during the summer months, what we've done is something called earth tubes. We've got four 18 inch diameter tubes, which are 150 foot long that go down through the bottom of the floor of the restaurant underneath 10 feet down all the way up and this steel boulder that you see over there. Yes. That's the intake valve. So that's where that's all the air in. Yeah, that's where all the air is coming in. And then when it's underground, it gets cooled down to about six degrees. And then it's kind of a poor man's GFM. That is so cool. And is there a button that you press to suck all the air in? Well, there's just a fan coming like and sucking it and pull it. So if you stand there, you can like hear it being sucked down. But yeah, it goes in during the summer at like 25 degrees and comes out about 11. Wow. Yeah, it's pretty neat. That is so cool. I love that. Now all the sustainability and beautiful architecture certainly does come at a cost. And when the old Fergie's burnt down, Jake and Jess invested nearly $2 million to build this new restaurant. But in hearing the passion that these two have for the nature around them, and when you see the large crowds waiting for a table every weekend, it's clear that it was money well spent. Fergie's Cafe is hands down one of the most unique restaurants in all of BC. And it's truly inspiring to hear the story behind such an amazing restaurant. Thanks for the tour. That was amazing. Cheers. Cheers. So tell me about this drink. You said I must try this. You have to. This is the Moor Caesar and it is. It's a season with a bit more. Yes. But it's actually the Moor Caesar is named after someone called Keegan Moor. He's a Squamish guy. He works for Squamish Fire Rescue and he was the firefighter who extinguished the last flames of the old restaurant. So we wanted to honor his memory. Wow. Cheers to Moor. Wow. This is a really great story. Yeah. Before we jump to like modern day present day about this beauty, I know it didn't start off like that. You guys bought this blend and everything because you guys were wanting to start a rafting business. What a rafting business. Yeah. That's where everything started. Yes. Please tell me. Well, it's just funny to think that's how we began. We don't even do the rafting anymore. No, no more rafting. But yeah, so it's a five acre property. Which has been here forever as a kind of resort. Yes. And the name Fergie's is a really old name. I mean, this whole property is steeped in story than history and memories for people. And so the Fergie's name came from the Ferguson family who owned the whole resort when it was a fishing resort. But the whole place was quite run down and it's hilarious when you think now what we bought, we were quite naive back then. Well, we were like, oh, what a great place to do rafting. It's right close to the river. How hard could it be to rent a cabin for the night? Just clean it, give someone the keys, take somebody out. We were naive. But I think we wouldn't have been here if we'd been just cleaned up. It's definitely such a unique experience. Like you guys didn't set out to create a restaurant experience. It was water rafting and then the resort business and it just morphed into Fergie's, the restaurant. Well, this is what suddenly we became so passionate about. And I guess what's lovely about the restaurant is so many people can come here and experience it. It really feels like you're really away when you're here, which Squamish locals love because they just hop down the road. It's only 10 minutes from town. Once we saw people just love being here, we just wanted to keep adding and making it cooler. Yeah, I like the game of focus and our passion, I guess. Yeah, we're very un-business-like business. It feels like it, right? Yeah. Like how many years ago did you, did this kind of morph into like the restaurant industry? It was actually after the fire, wasn't it? After the fire? Yeah, because when the restaurant burned down, we got so much contact from so many people that we knew, that the people we didn't know. All over the world. We got food dropped off on our doorstep. It was crazy and we hadn't maybe realized what a good thing or how much some people loved it really. How, actually, what happened with the fire? I actually don't know much about it. Well, and we don't know what caused it, but there's a little cabin that overlooks the cafe at the back, the logger's shack. And the chap staying in there saw flames out the back of the restaurant. He called 911. But I, we had a, how old was Teddy? So Teddy was six months. So I'd just about three o'clock in the morning, I'd gone to him because he'd been crying, put him down, gone back to bed and I was lying in bed and I was looking out the window and I was like, that's weird because the color wasn't right. And it didn't, it was like this weird like orangey guy and I hadn't, I didn't clock it and I just lay down. I couldn't sleep and I was like, it's just so weird. And then I heard the sirens and you know, we live on the Squamish Valley. There's a lot of property up there and the sirens go past every now and then, but the sirens were like, go, go, go. And then they just stopped right outside. And I was like, I don't know. So I was out the door in 30 seconds. And then. And Jess was asleep. As usual. I woke up. I literally, I remember waking up because I could hear Jake running up the stairs in his boots, which was a weird sort of noise, but his face disappeared in front of me like this and he said, Ferguson's on fire. Do you want to come say goodbye? And then he just left. So then I kind of, what just happened? It wasn't the most kind way to wake you up. No. Do you want to say goodbye? That's the first thing you said. That was it. Do you want to come say goodbye? Like, I think you just, as soon as you saw it, you're like, there's no saving that. By the time I got out there, it was, it was gone and it was so eerie. It was just this weird sound, like, like crackling. And by the time I was there, the, yeah, the flames were like 20 feet above the building and it was just gone. How tough was it to rebuild it? Actually, before we even go there, please share with us some of the secrets. How much did it take to rebuild? Just a rough estimate. This place. All in with all the equipment and furniture and everything. 1.7 million. Yeah. 1.7. It's worth it. It's worth it. It's worth it, guys. It's worth it. But tell me the process. The first thing was to, I guess, we had to understand, there were a lot of restrictions. So we had to understand those first. So we had to be up in the air. The concrete, the being up in the air, that was, that wasn't through choice. That was dictated to us. No, it's not very practical having your restaurant 10 feet up in the air. It's quite hard work for our service team for getting deliveries in and making it accessible. You know, all these things become quite challenging when you have to be in the air. Oh, that was required. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Because flood water can come through, so it's on still, so the flood can just wash on under it and it will still be here, kind of like an ark. But with it? With a fridge full of beer and food. So, you know, yeah. And what really, like the center of attention aside from this building is this tree. Yes. Please, tell me about this tree. So this is a black walnut tree and we love it so much. It is quite old. Our children are really worried about it, aren't they? We've told them it's their problem. It is elderly. So we have a really wonderful friend who's an arborist who we work with with the tree and he keeps an eye on it. But it just has these stunning huge leaves. So it's a rain shelter. It's a shade in the summer. It's a pretty awesome canopy like at night when it's lit from underneath. That's why you guys have so much wedding catering and venue in here. Yeah, we do a lot of weddings here. Well, just because it's really, it feels really kind of you're out in nature with trees and beauty, but it's kind of comfortable in easy years. You know what? This feels really wise to me. Like, I'm like, oh, this is a wise old grandpa just looking after us, kind of feeling to me. I'm like, wow, so wise. And if you look, I don't know, when you come in the driveway, the way that the building is designed, where the tree is and where it comes, you actually almost can't see Fergie. So it's hidden almost entirely behind the foliage of the tree, which was part of the design. And the way it sort of creeps in, that was all part of the architecture. But the crane operator couldn't believe when he was like, so we're going to cut all these branches out. No, you've got a drop. So that steel beam at the top there had to be lowered between two branches. We were there like, when we designed the building, this is ridiculous. This beam has to go here between that branch and that branch. This is one of the main points of the building has to go there. And yeah, they couldn't believe it. We haven't even told them about our Pythagoras. Pythagoras? What are you talking about? Can you explain this? So just another late night mission was working out. We used some like old school, well, I don't know what you call it, high school maths to work out the height of the roof is calculated by, we use Google to work out the height of the mountain over there. How far we are from it. And then we use like basic trigonometry to work out if we, and we figured it, if we raise the bar, the roof height by six inches to 10 and a half feet, then the average person sitting at the bar can see the top of the mountain. Because they want to cut the peak height. In the original plans, the roof was going to be at 10 feet, and it just kind of like, for me as a six foot guy, I was like, that I'm not quite going to be able to see the top of the mountain. So there we were, yeah, Google Maps, working out the distance, the height. We're like, yeah. We still got the drawing, we found it the other day, like proper two kids with it. Whose idea was it? Was it Jess's idea? You know, I can't even remember them. We were at school together. So I think, I feel like a lot of these ideas maybe happen at the same time. We're not even sure who comes up with it first. We had no idea if it'd be right. It was quite a relief. And we're like, huh, nailed it. So you didn't even get an architect to, hey, you know what, the architect recommended it to lift up another, no, you guys, you know what, let's figure it out. Let's do it. Well, our architect is a perfectionist. He's amazing. Chris Hunter is very perfectionist. And there's lots of details that are here. But definitely we challenged him with a few things. He, we surprised him a few times with the things that we cared about. Joking Jessisms. Yeah, yeah. So you guys are a destination location. It took me, what, two hours to get here. And yeah, like, how do you guys market this place? Well, that's always been the challenge, isn't it? And we are out of the way. And those first few, I was going to say weeks, but months, maybe even years, it was, it was pretty slow going. But the word slowly has got out. But we're only 10 minutes from Squamish. But now the amount of people who drive up from Vancouver. Yeah, because it's such a beautiful drive. So actually. There's a thing to do. That's the thing. Ferguson's become a thing to do. So what should we do today? Let's go to Fergie's versus let's go to the beach or to the lake. It's, you know, there's the effort of getting here. But then it's just being here and taking your time. And so now that word is out, people have learned that it is worth the effort. Were you ever scared that it's not going to work out? You're like, you're millions of dollars. We were told never to do it. Yeah, when we bought the property, the people at the custodians at the time were like, just so you know, loads of people have tried to get that restaurant off ground. No one's ever going to come out here. I guess it kind of sat with us for a little while. But then eventually we were, we thought we'd have a go. We don't take much credit for that. Like Squamish has changed a lot of the town. We have such a loyal local community. And they've really kept us going all these years. Now the secret's out a little bit more. They actually, some of our Squamish locals stay away in the summer, don't they? They're like, it's raining. Yes, we can go back to Fergie if it's going to be quieter. So I guess the secret for you guys, what's the secret sauce? Well, what is it that made you guys so successful? I know this is a really cheesy buzzword, but I think it's authenticity. We're not very typical. We're kind of a bit quirky, a bit unexpected. But there's a lot of story here. There's a lot of heart. It's just us. We do things because we think it would be nice for people to love it. I think it truly lies in the passion, the passion you guys have with this place. It truly is. Because if you're just looking at the business aspect, you just shared with me average order value 25 bucks. It doesn't make sense at the end of the day, right? I know, we've been charged like $50. We do $10,000 a day. That's a lot of eggs and potatoes. Exactly, yeah. So for you guys, it truly is the passion that drives it. And people feel it. And that's really why I'm like, wow, I have to come back. But I think this restaurant is supported by the resort and the wedding business. And all of that is about that same feeling people have here. They're like, I want to spend time here. I want to have my wedding here. And so the wonderful feeling Fergie's has created has actually helped the rest of the business. And then that has helped Fergie's again. It's all very symbiotic. Wow, look at that. Wow, that's awesome. We met in biology class, so I guess it's fitting. Very fitting. That's awesome. Thank you. Thank you. It's a pleasure to learn so much about the stories, the history about Fergie's. Sometimes with restaurants, they don't have that deep of a root, that deep of a story that they can tell. But for you guys, you guys can tell stories for the whole day with your friend's family. And I think that's really the essence of this. So cool. It's Jay, that's another story. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you once again. Thank you. Cheers. Cheers. So there you go guys. The secret sauce behind Fergie's success. Jake and Jess's philosophy is simple. If you're passionate about something, don't be afraid to go all in. Whether it be the detailed architecture, to the delicious food, to the nurture of the community. Thank you so much for watching this episode of The Secret Sauce. I'll see you guys next time.