Building Pop-Up Restaurants at Minus 62°C: Remote Construction Lessons from Churchill, Manitoba

0:00Welcome back to the Atlantic Construction Podcast. Very excited for our podcast today. This is an Against the Clock featured podcast in association with Construction Clock — the first hands-free time tracking app dedicated to the construction industry. We're pleased to welcome Marco Gallo, founder of 0812 Building Solutions, and we're going to be discussing today just a really exciting, unique, and interesting project and construction contract with RAW:almond for pop-up restaurants and some crazy locations. But firstly, Marco,

0:43thanks for being with us here today. Thank you for having me, and yeah, excited to talk about the wild and weird world of pop-up restaurants. Yeah, for sure. So, to get started, yeah, just give us kind of the down-low on RAW:almond as a client and sort of when you started to build these pop-up restaurants before we get into some of the interesting details. So it's a local architect that started an art gallery in downtown Winnipeg, teamed up

1:17with a restaurateur that owned a restaurant in Winnipeg to do these pop-up restaurants on the ice every single year at the Forks in downtown Winnipeg. So it's where our two rivers meet. They would do a pop-up restaurant for 20 days — it became a design competition for the stabilization of the building itself — and then they fly in chefs from around the world for high-end dining, five-course meals, and we have to somehow keep them warm and keep a kitchen operational on ice in the middle of

1:54winter. Wow. Can you, for listeners, before we go any further, just define a pop-up restaurant? Assuming it's temporary — so it's temporary, we still have to abide by all health and safety standards for exiting health and safety for food prep, all those things, lighting, egress. It's completely on the frozen river, and yeah, I guess that kind of covers it. The pop-up aspect — it is completely temporary, it goes up and then it comes back down. Otherwise it would melt and disappear in the spring, right. So

2:30typically how long are they left up — just for the winter season, I'm assuming, or kind of a month or so? In between the safest time with the temperatures, you know, certain degrees, and yeah, it's usually about 30 days total — gives us about a week and a half for the build, and then there's 20 to 25 days of operation, and then it comes back down again. It usually starts the first week of January for the build because at that point the ice is safe.

2:58We've got about two to two and a half feet of ice at that time of year, so we can drive trucks and trailers and lifts and all kinds of things to get our materials and equipment down there. So how many of these pop-up restaurants have you built for RAW:almond thus far? We've done seven in Winnipeg, we've done one in Gimli which is a little lake town about an hour drive north of Winnipeg, and then we did the one in Churchill, Manitoba,

3:30which is a flight away and it's on the bay in northern Manitoba. So anyone who's going to these restaurants to dine would be taking like a Cessna, some kind of a plane out to the location. Churchill does have — it's not an international airport, but it is a puddle-jumper airport to go farther north to Baffin Island. But yeah, they're decent-sized commercial flights, you know, 80-seater kind of planes, but that's the only way in and out of Churchill.

4:05You used to be able to go by rail, but some mudslides and things — it's become increasingly difficult to get to Churchill by rail. Wow. So for anyone listening, at this point the builders that are listening are probably thinking logistics-wise — materials, labour, challenges, so many challenges that one would assume. Tell us a little bit about — I'm assuming the materials are shipped out in the sea can — but tell us some of the stories, maybe some of the challenges you've had to overcome

4:36on one of these builds, just some challenges you've had to overcome with such drastic conditions. Wind is horrible, as everyone in the construction industry knows. It's one thing to have your mind and your body fail, but tools just tend to stop working at, you know, minus 25, minus 30 — especially air-powered tools. We start to get condensation and those just fault out on you. Battery life expectancy is horrible. In the Winnipeg aspect, you know, we

5:14are a major city — we've got hardware stores and Home Depots and all those good things. But when we start to go more remote, it's not just, oh, someone go jump in the truck and go pick up a box of number eight Robertsons and come back again. It's a little more complicated than that. So in Churchill specifically, it's sort of like gambling going to the hardware store if you don't really know what you're going to get, and you have to be adapting to the situation and hot-routing things together in certain cases.

5:47So how does that work with the hard spec and plans, or are you able to be creative on the design — is that you have full control then? There's certainly some fluidity to how it goes together. The Churchill one was prefabricated to avoid as many issues as possible, so everything got shipped to us and was pre-measured and all those good things, and then a lot of redundancies — let's ship three of those, we only need one; let's ship five of those, we only

6:25need two — in the event that something breaks in transit or doesn't fit or we have to adapt to the situation. So what about safety-wise? As far as safety standards, you know, do you think in the typical toolbox talks, but are there visits from safety third parties — often, or more frequent because of the nature of the project? It's surprisingly less frequent because it's sort of borderline on a sculptural installation as well as an occupiable space at the

6:59same time — because of its classification. Okay, yeah. And then especially in Churchill, the safety — it's a cowboy town for sure, so safety standards aren't the same as they'd be in a major city. We did have the issue of polar bears in Churchill — that was one thing I've never had to worry about on a job site, so that was an experience I'll never forget. We had a bear guard associated with us that was just hired to walk around the fort

7:30all day with a shotgun and make sure that we weren't going to get eaten while trying to work. I think people think of polar bears like the Coca-Cola commercial, but they're actually absolutely vicious beasts — they're big and they're scary and they're pretty hungry that time of year. Where we were, about a half a mile out you could see the sea ice where it doesn't freeze anymore, where the water coming out of Churchill — the fresh water is mixing with the salt

7:59water — so it's all open water there, and the polar bears just hang out there all day fishing and hunting, and then they come into town at night to try to find whatever else they can, people included. And yeah, it was wild to have to do — they're called bear sweeps. We do a job-site bear sweep every single morning, and our bear guard would radio us in that it was okay to come to site. Wow, that's insane. That's not your typical challenge to deal with

8:32on a construction project, for sure. So tell us a little bit about, you know, for these pop-up restaurants — having the design, at least somewhat or maybe mostly internally, and having control — what materials are you using for the structure? Is there different materials used for glazing, for windows? Just anything interesting about the assemblies on the envelope or roof — just maybe tell us a little bit about some of the ways the

9:06materials maybe are different. So with the Winnipeg ones there is recycling in mind, because this can be pretty wasteful to build something temporary and then just put it in a dumpster and send it to a landfill when it's all done. So that's typically a design intent and almost a restraint — can this be recycled, can it be taken down and reused or repurposed? So there's a lot of those conversations that happen early on. A lot of pipe-and-clamp scaffolding. The kitchen gets reused every single

9:47year in Winnipeg, so it's the same 40-by-20 kitchen that we have all prefabricated — spray-foam panels that tip up — and then the kitchen layout goes inside and everything's wipeable and food-safe. So that's great as far as the waste component goes. For windbreaks and insulation, tarping also creates really unique lighting situations to let diffuse light through, so it makes these really beautiful interior vignettes that are sort of unexpected happy accidents. As far as the Churchill build went, it was modelled after — I believe it was

10:33supposed to be the inner hollow of a ship. So it was all done out of three-ply LBLs built as A-frames, and then it wasn't the same A-frame across the whole thing — it would undulate, so it sort of came out of the landscape and then dove back into it, and you'd enter in one side and then exit out the other. The northern lights in Churchill are world-renowned — people fly from around the world to experience them, along with the polar bears — so that was a massive

11:07component to this design that RAW:almond had put together. So in the dining room itself we clad the whole A-frame in a crystal, incredibly thick poly, and you dim the lights down and you would be having your beautiful five-course meal underneath the Northern Lights. So that was a really unique experience — to try to do a weatherproof, safe environment that was also completely clear in the middle of nowhere. Must be satisfying, though, as an architect yourself, to work on such a unique project like

11:52that — I'm sure there must have been a level of satisfaction with those, especially maybe the Churchill one, that you just don't get from your typical fit-up or home build, whatnot. It's very satisfying, and it's quite — I'm a big camper — it's sort of glamping, for lack of a better term. So it's quite nice to know that it doesn't have to be completely perfect because it is temporary, and it's more, you know, globally how it functions rather than, you know, that

12:27baseboard didn't get silicone on the top of it — we're not having those types of conversations that we would typically have when we're walking a commercial site or doing a punch list. So there's something really nice about its temporary nature. Can you tell us a little bit about the nature of these pop-up restaurants as far as the disassembly, the reuse — what happens after the season? Is it taken apart, categorized, and then it's all set for the following winter season?

12:59Just the Churchill one — they haven't done it in a few years because of COVID — but that one would get recycled each year. There are certain sacrificial components, like, you know, some sheathing won't go back together the exact same way it did last time, so some of the sheathing just ends up having to get thrown away. But the bones themselves definitely get reused every year if they do continue it. The ones in Winnipeg — the design is different every year, so a lot of times

13:36the bones of that are usually pipe-and-clamp scaffolding, so those can just go back to a job site and be used for stucco or low-rise buildings or what have you throughout the year, and then we can reuse them for the next little restaurant. So this is an ongoing project then, with the reassembly every winter season for this client. Tell us how this came about — was it tendered, how would you price something, how did you price the first one, or how

14:08did that relationship work with your team and the client? I think maybe we're the only ones stupid enough to agree to do it. Well — I don't know, I'd replace 'stupid' with courageous and risk-taking. Well, maybe, maybe a little bit — that's very kind of you, thank you. Yeah, well, I mean, having a design background, these types of things are enticing to our company and they're fun, they're temporary, they're good for the city. You know, we may or

14:45may not get some free tickets out of it from time to time, so that also — yeah, great spot for a date for the girlfriend or the wife, huh? Yeah, I mean, it justifies me coming home completely wind-burnt and exhausted, or gone for a month. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's great. I wonder if, just in context, maybe you could tell us a little bit about 0812 Building Solutions — you know, maybe just a little bit about your background, and obviously aside from

15:15the feature of this Against the Clock featured podcast with these pop-up restaurant builds — such unique projects — just for context, a little about 0812 Building Solutions and the company itself and the other services that you provide, be it residential, commercial, whatnot. So we are a general — commercial and residential general contractor. We primarily do new builds, major renovations, and additions on the residential side, and on the commercial side we do tenant

15:51improvements, low-rise buildings,

15:57anything kind of wicked and weird we also somehow end up getting roped into. I think it's because of the design background — when an architect has a really great idea but has no idea how it's going to stand or align, or any of those buzzwords that architects sprinkle in their drawings all the time, we get the call for those as well, or at least we like to get the call. And I think this will tie in to our featured episode on

16:28these unique projects. As you — I think you mentioned yourself and your partner, Marco, are both from a design background, so being architects, having a design background, when you're taking on these projects from a business standpoint — can you speak on the sort of risk analysis, or you know, sacrificing maybe margin or risk level for the satisfaction of unique projects? Obviously that's part of your mentality in taking on these pop-up restaurants. Can you just speak a little bit on sort of how you and your business

17:07partner, your management team, kind of assess the risk? Obviously it's a business — you need to make margin — and what you're willing to sacrifice on, you know, the left-to-right-brain thinking of: you want to be involved in these unique projects on the design side, but it's got to make sense numbers-wise. Can you speak on that a little bit? It's a little long-winded, but — that's a great point. To answer it shortly: these are the projects that don't — they don't make

17:39money. Let's just be honest. They — good for PR, good for the

17:48you know, they tie in our design background and sort of stimulate that part of the brain. And they end up getting us referrals, which is great. So it's sculptural but it's also marketing at the same time. But it can't be the whole thing. So the projects to keep the lights on are the new builds and the commercial tenant improvements and things like that. There's not much risk involved for us because we usually donate some time and

18:21it's usually done at a discounted rate, but we usually just do it on a cost scenario, so everything's open book. And these things tend to evolve and have to adapt quickly, so quoting them would be an absolute nightmare — and there would have to be so many — you really can't hard-quote a project like that, right. So I guess, again, to your point, you've got a lot of revenue happening with your typical commercial and residential, and then you're

18:54able to take these on as special projects, knowing that these aren't for margin on the grand scheme of things — these are kind of on the side and they serve a purpose in that regard. They're romantic, which is a part of being the owner of a construction business. There is some romance to the whole thing, and that's why I got into it in the first place — that pursuit. Amazing. Yeah, I think people are romantic

19:20about sports, romantic about building too, and that's kind of what eventually keeps us going. Is there anything else you want to mention? I think we've touched on a lot of this — you know, the 0812 Building Solutions story, your story, and just this theme of these pop-up restaurants. Anything we didn't touch on, maybe, that you feel our listeners should hear, or to close out? Yeah, I mean, I

19:49suppose we could talk a bit about the weather there, because I know we're used to it, unfortunately, but I know it can be shocking to hear some of the temperatures and conditions from other people. So I can probably talk a bit about that. Absolutely. It was minus 62 when we got off the plane with the wind chill, and we — I think we landed at about 7:30 in the morning and we're supposed to be on site at 9:30.

20:21It was a one-hour tundra buggy ride — so this is basically a school bus on top of a monster truck, and that's used as our site trailer, quote-unquote. There's a couple of propane fireplaces in there to heat the space, so we use that for keeping batteries warm, keeping ourselves warm, warming up tools when they would go into cold delay, being saved from bears as well. So we had a one-hour commute on the tundra buggy across the bay ice just from the port of Churchill to get

20:58to our job site for the day. So that was, again, a unique experience. And you're just looking out this buggy at this wind-swept, incredibly harsh landscape and thinking, in that moment: what have I done, why am I here, what are we doing? You must have had some serious doubt set in in that moment — like, what are we doing? It was — yeah, it was a bit eye-opening, because we were just driving and you look out

21:34the front windshield — it just went to nowhere. We were like, where are we going? Yeah, it's part of the adventure, though. Yeah. So that was definitely a very unique experience. And temperatures — you know, I've built in the low minus 50s with wind chill, but that's nothing like that. And then it being wet cold up there, which we don't really get a lot of in Manitoba — we're dry. So minus 40 doesn't feel nearly as bad as a minus 20 in Halifax or Vancouver. Absolutely. But we had — we have

22:10sea ice that touches Manitoba, so being wet cold in Manitoba at that temperature was absurd. And you cannot dress for that, no matter what you wear. So there's a lot of eye-opening moments and more warm-ups than we're used to in the tundra buggy. You mentioned — I think maybe prior to going on air — something about past settlements, I think it might have been in the early 1800s or something. There's a little bit of history there, and one of the locations was at

22:44the Churchill port, where they had the Hudson's Bay connection on that project. Yeah, so most of the goods — from Winnipeg west, before the advent of the railroad — things would get shipped into the port of Churchill, and then they would get on a boat and sail south to Winnipeg, and then they would get on another boat and keep heading west on other rivers. Most of the British shipments would come through Churchill — it was a major, major port. So it was also a really strategic port

23:22when the French and the British were fighting over who was going to run Canada, basically. So the restaurant that we built was inside Fort Churchill, which was strategically placed at the end of a peninsula and would guard the port — and, you know, shoot down the French if they were showing up — and sometimes the French would be running it, other times the British would be running it, so it changed hands a few times. Wow, such an interesting detail on that project. I think

23:55I think too the Hudson's Bay Company is — I think it's the oldest corporation on the planet. Yes, it's 16-something — it's over 400 years old. Yeah, insane. Those were different times — the trading days and all that. Yeah, yeah. Money didn't matter, it was a barter economy. Yeah, for sure, man. Those are some great details. Anything else, Marco? I mean, I could talk about the bar life in Churchill, but I don't know if that's going to go on the air or not. Is there a pop-up bar there as well?

24:33So yeah, the bar — the one bar in town, everyone was there, it was Bingo night. Definitely a little worrying seeing your bear guard at the bar — he's off duty. Don't have too many, don't have too many there. You gotta — we need you in the morning, buddy. Yeah, that's great. That was just great. It's been great chatting with you on this. Kind of blown away — you know, you hear about so many of these projects that go on,

25:05right, you don't always know about them or hear about them, but it's nice to get to dig in with you on these and hear about such a unique build — such unique builds. It's crazy. I can't imagine building a school or a gym or a rec center — you know, a lot of companies do that up north — and I can only imagine the challenges that they would face. Like, ours was easy by those standards. We were four days to build it and two days to take it

25:38down, so it was quick and dirty compared to months on an island you can only probably get materials to by ice road, and flying in and out and all that stuff. Yeah. Oh, that's a good point. I mean, those would be much larger corporations with logistics and systems in place for such drastic organization for those things, but still — for your company to take these on, it's impressive.

26:10Congrats on that. And yeah, it's been great to talk to you today, and I know our listeners on the east coast and central Canada — and we have some western Canada too — will enjoy tuning into this episode. It's definitely one of the most unique story-wise episodes we've had on. We're pushing toward 60-some odd episodes now, so thank you for being a special one. Appreciate it. Yeah, thank you, and thanks for having

26:41me, and congrats on all the success of the podcast. Cheers, Marco. Thank you.