Burns Lake’s Top of the Line Catering business by Carmen Charlie has been awarded the Outstanding Business Achievement Award as part of the 2020 Indigenous Business Awards.
The awardees were announced on Oct. 5 by the BC Achievement Foundation.
“We are proud to represent Burns Lake,” said Carmen Charlie.
This was the 12th year of the Indigenous Business Awards. The Indigenous Business Awards were launched in 2008 to honour and celebrate business excellence and this year eight Indigenous businesses, entrepreneurs, partnership entities and community-owned enterprises will be recognized from across the province of BC.
“I am pretty excited about it and it is a great opportunity to showcase Top of the Line catering to a higher demographic I guess. It does change some stuff like it gives us more confirmation to keep going because once Covid hit, we were shut down for a long time,” said Charlie. They are now back to catering but only to smaller groups, are doing Covid-safe packaging and are no longer offering buffets.
Anyone can nominate to businesses and individuals for the different categories, each year. Earlier this year, the Village of Burns Lake’s council voted to nominate the catering business for the award.
“Council felt it was a good opportunity to highlight a local business that started as a one-person operation making cupcakes that has grown into a local success story with many employees,” said CAO Sheryl Worthing in an email to Lakes District News.
“Council selected them because the Village has worked directly and indirectly with the business. They have catered a number of large events in our community, BC Bike Ride for international riders, numerous Indigenous events and the B.C. Community Forest Conference. The Community Forest Conference had an attendance of almost 400, and Carmen’s company cooked breakfast, lunch and dinner for each day of the event and it was seamless,” said Worthing.
Apart from Charlie’s catering business, Langley’s Longhouse Media won the Young Entrepreneur of the Year award, Merritt’s Raven Reads Books Ltd. won the Business of the Year – one-to-two person enterprise, Brackendale’s Skwálwen Botanicals won Business of the Year – three-to-ten person enterprise, Victoria’s OneFeather Technologies won the Business of the Year – 11+ person enterprise, Alkali Lake’s Alkali Resource Management Ltd. won in the Community-Owned Business of the Year – one entity category, Mount Currie’s Lil’wat Holdings Limited Partnership won in the Community-Owned Business of the Year – two or more entities category and Cranbrook’s Nupqu Resource Limited Partnership won the Business Partnership of the Year award.
Like everything that has been happening virtually since Covid, this year’s award winners will also be celebrated in a series of digital campaigns and films honouring their achievements, this November.
Priyanka Ketkar
Multimedia journalist
@PriyankaKetkar
priyanka.ketkar@ldnews.net
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