Following is a letter to Burnaby residents from Mayor Mike Hurley
We are so proud in Burnaby to be a city where people can experience food from around the world within only a few blocks. Burnaby’s diversity has helped make our city a unique place to eat, and truly one of the most exciting food destinations in the province.
Across our neighbourhoods, restaurants, cafés, bakeries and smaller food businesses you can see reflected the cultures, traditions and personal stories of the people who call Burnaby home.
This week, we launched the Taste of Burnaby series, which is a new monthly video series across social media highlighting some of the many places to eat or enjoy a coffee in our city. Each month we will publish a video introducing residents and people from outside of our city to a different local business, the people behind it and the food or drinks that make it worth discovering.
Food and coffee are helping define Burnaby
Burnaby’s food scene covers Persian, Korean, Filipino and Japanese restaurants to Italian, Thai, Indian, African, Latin American, Mediterranean and West Coast food. We now have more than 800 restaurants across the city, showcasing more than 150 global cuisines.
Each part of Burnaby offers a different experience. Burnaby Heights is one of the region's most popular food destinations, and its long, walkable stretch of Hastings Street is lined with restaurants, cafés, bakeries, butchers and specialty food shops, all within a vibrant neighbourhood shopping district that dates back to 1908.
Edmonds is known for the diversity and authenticity of its food. South Asian, Middle Eastern, East African, Southeast Asian, East Asian and Balkan businesses reflect the communities that live in the area, with many family-run places serving food grounded in their own cultures and traditions.
Metrotown is at the heart of one of the province’s busiest shopping and transit areas, bringing a huge range of restaurants and cafés together in one part of the city.
Crystal Mall is now a destination in its own right, particularly for Chinese and other Asian food. While Lougheed is especially well known for Korean food, with everything from Korean barbecue and fried chicken to traditional soups and desserts.
The Bite of Burnaby festival in March featured more than 75 restaurants and over 16 curated dining events. These included prix-fixe menus, cultural tastings, workshops and chef-led events across the city attracting diners from elsewhere in the region, across British Columbia and from Washington State. In 2021 there were 15 participating restaurants.
Our series will also be covering some of the best places to enjoy a coffee in Burnaby. Coffee and tea culture has changed so much over the years. What used to be about getting a quick cup of coffee is now an experience of its own, and people travel across the city to try a particular drink or discover a new café. So it will be interesting to explore that.
Matcha Tea Lab at Crystal Mall is a great example. Burnaby local Cathy Lau opened it with a childhood friend in February 2026, creating the kind of dedicated matcha café they used to have to go elsewhere to find. These are exactly the kinds of local places and stories we want to highlight.
The wider economic value of this sector
Supporting this sector is about more than the important work of promoting our restaurants. These businesses support and create jobs in our city, they occupy storefronts, bring character to our neighbourhood streets and give people reasons to visit different parts of the city or to invest here.
There were an estimated 1.3 million visitors to the city in 2023, and they spent over $990 million, supporting over 7,000 jobs.
Food and beverage accounted for 23 per cent of that visitor spending, making it the second-largest category after retail. That represents over $228 million spent by visitors on food and beverages in one year. This year with the World Cup, that figure will be even higher.
People will cross the region, cross the province and sometimes cross the border to try a restaurant they have heard about or seen on social media. Once they get here, they shop, attend an event, visit another neighbourhood or stay overnight. So a strong food sector supports local businesses directly, but it also strengthens Burnaby as a place people choose to visit and spend time in.
Reaching people in the ways they now find food
How people discover restaurants has changed, especially for younger residents who often find their next place to eat through a short video shared on social media by someone they trust. This is particularly relevant at a time when local news and traditional media have fewer resources to cover every new restaurant, independent café or neighbourhood business.
That gives local food influencers an important role. They can take audiences inside small businesses that may never have had access to any significant advertising.
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There are many of these creators living in Burnaby, or who grew up here, know the area well, and now cover the local food and drink scene in our city. We are going to be working with some of these for the Taste of Burnaby series.
Each month we will be joined by a local influencer to capture these wonderful food locations, as well as hearing about how they found their wayinto this interesting career and the connections they have to Burnaby.
For our first video, we were joined by Diana Chan, known to her many followers as Foodology. Diana grew up in Burnaby and started sharing her food experiences online in 2010 while studying business at Simon Fraser University. Since then, she has built a following of more than 60,000 people on Instagram alone, and she is highly respected for her judgment and, above all, her genuine passion for food.
A partnership with BCIT
Taste of Burnaby also came out of an important local partnership. We were delighted to welcome BCIT student Sumehar Jogar to City Hall this year as a Digital Strategy and Public Affairs intern.
As part of her work to help young people better understand and engage with municipal politics, she was involved in developing the concept for a recurring food and coffee series. She led the initial outreach to restaurants and influencers, coordinated the logistics and helped film the pilot episode.
In the BCIT spirit of hands-on learning by doing, Sumehar did not spend her internship observing municipal work from the sidelines. Her input helped create something the City can continue using after her placement has ended and we were delighted to be a part of her learning and what no doubt will be a bright future.
These opportunities matter for students, but the benefit is not one-sided. We gained from Sumehar’s ideas and her understanding of digital audiences. That is a true partnership. We are so proud to have world-class institutions like BCIT and SFU here in Burnaby. By creating opportunities for their students and graduates and building stronger partnerships with these institutions, we can draw on their talent and ideas as our city continues to grow.
Our first Taste of Burnaby video is now live, featuring one of my own favourite restaurants, Siam Le Bien Thai Cuisine on Hastings Street. We hope the series encourages you to get out, try somewhere new and tell us where Taste of Burnaby should go next.
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