order to attract and keep good people,” he adds. “We have a gym on site. We have a cafeteria on site. In the cafeteria, we subsidized lunches so everyone has access to a two-dollar vegetarian lunch every day. We have a recreational property with a cabin outside of the city that anyone in the company can book out and use for a weekend. Those are just some examples of the things that we do.” As a result, AyA Kitchens has been able to retain a lot of “very long-term employees,” Dave says. He believes that retention is a good indicator of the strength of their company culture, but he believes an even better indicator is the fact that a surprising number of people who left have returned. “Invariably, people leave,” he says. “What I’m really pleased about is that we have a number of very good people who started their careers here, left to check out some other opportunities, but then came back and never left again. We have quite a few middle-to-senior managers who did that. I think that says everything.” Then there are the company’s suppliers – “again, they’re all long-term,” Dave describes. “We not only value those kind of relationships, we do everything we can to protect and maintain them,” Dave says. As an example, he cites the case of a long-term board supplier based in Quebec. At the beginning of the pandemic, AyA Kitchens was deemed essential but their supplier was not. “Immediately, we went to bat THE CONSTRUCTION SOURCE CANADA
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