YXE Poutine Week 2020

About YXE Poutine Week 2020 from Chelsea, Poutine Week 2020 Event Chair 

What an amazing year for our YXE Poutine Week event! This year we partnered with 20 locally owned restaurants in Saskatoon from September 19-27. This year’s event was held one month earlier than in the previous years and has seemed to work better weather wise allowing most restaurant patios to remain open. The list of these local favourites hotspots included Hometown Diner, Leopold’s (4 locations – in Rosewood, Evergreen, Broadway, and Martensville), Prairie Sun Brewery, The Yard and Flagon, Congress Beer House, Birmingham’s, Ace Burger, Smokes Poutine, Odla, Güd Eats, Hudson’s Pub, Hearth Restaurant, Stumbletown, Cohen’s Beer Republic, Blue Rhino, Baba’s Perogies, and the Caesar Mill in Martensville. Some decadent menu options included a Basil Pesto Grilled Cheez n’ Tomato Soup Poutine, Mushroom Truffle Poutine, Dill Pickle Poutine (with a side of Dill Pickle Beer), a Cheeseburger Poutine, a Chilli Cheese Poutine, and a Spicy Jerk Chicken. These poutines were devoured by the amazing people of Saskatoon and Area in record-breaking numbers. Our goal for 2020 was to raise $10,000 in support of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Saskatoon and Area going towards creating developmental mentoring relationships that ignite potential in young people. This meant that restaurants would have to sell a combined total of 2,500 specialty gourmet poutines in order to reach our target. We are over the moon ecstatic to announce that we have surpassed that goal, raising a total of $11,115.00!!!

Part of the success of this year is thanks to our amazing Brand Ambassadors that volunteered their time to help bring awareness to this essential fundraising campaign. These 11 influencers in the community helped share YXE Poutine Week information and enlightened the public of where the raised funds go. The list of these supportive personalities included Matt Gore – the Ginger Ninja, Tyler Babiy – Founder of Social Made Local, Amy Gill – Director, Go-To-Market (Product Marketing) at Vendasta, Alice Kuipers – Local Author and award-winning Young Adult/Adult crossover publisher, Maygen from Sneakers and Lipstick, Kurt Dahl – Lawyer and Drummer for One Bad Son, Slade Desrochers – Real Estate Consultant & Agent with REX Saskatoon, Echo Roberts – YXE Wedding Photographer from Eyes of Echo, Kelsi Kendel – Local Sasky Blogger, Clayton Kroeker – 96.3 Cruz FM Morning Show Co-Host, and Stephanie Massicotte – Anchor/Host or CTV Saskatoon Morning Live. This year’s event awareness has blown up and it is a huge thank you to these lovely people. 

We also thank the media for highlighting our event through their platforms. We would like to acknowledge Darby Sutherland from Tourism Saskatoon, Janella Hamilton from CTV Saskatoon Morning Live, Ciara Yaschuk from Global Saskatoon, Greggor from 98 Cool, and Steve & Dave from CJWW’s the Moo Crew for supporting our event by sharing the good news! 

These restaurants are competing throughout the nine days for two very special awards… the Gravy Bowl Champion and Poutine Choice Award. The Gravy Bowl Champion is awarded to the restaurant that sold the most poutines throughout the event and the Poutine Choice Award is awarded the most popular restaurant voted by all of the poutine-eaters who engaged with YXE Poutine Week via social media (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram) and used the hashtag #guilfreepoutine. This is an exciting component added to help fuel the drive of each restaurant participating. This year’s Gravy Bowl Champion and Poutine Choice Award were both claimed by Prairie Sun Brewery! Chef Patrick and his team were able to sell 492 Poutines, breaking the previous record of amount sold by over 150 and 40+ Dill Pickle Beer sold for an additional $40 donation.

“I’ve helped out with the poutine week committee for a few years now and it’s been awesome to see the event grow! I met Patrick this year and his excitement and engagement in this campaign blew me away! Him and the whole Prairie Sun team really gave it their all to make this a success and it showed. They totally deserved to take home both the trophies this year and I can attest that both the poutine and beer they made were delicious! 

I’ve been a Big Brother for over 7 years now and I’ve definitely seen the impact. Something as simple as selling poutine can help make a difference so it’s greatly appreciated how much all of the restaurants this year did to support!” – Colton Wiegers, Event Committee Member  

This year, more than others, was so important to raise money in support of youth mentorship and programming at Big Brothers Big Sisters of Saskatoon and Area due to the declared state of a pandemic by the World Health Organization. 

“The COVID-19 pandemic is making this event more impactful than ever,” said Kim Megyesi, Executive Director of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Saskatoon and Area. “Right now, is a critical time to focus on children’s health, wellbeing, and futures.   We know that the COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly impacted the children and families we serve. Loneliness and social isolation can be difficult for all of us, but vulnerable families and children will suffer the most. We’re looking forward to using the donations to support connections with mentors, find new mentors for the kids who are still awaiting their matches, and to support our programming.” 

I would like to give a special thank-you to our 2020 Poutine Partners UNO Printing CO. and the Kinsmen Club in Saskatoon. UNO Printing Co. was founded in 2017 by Mac MacLean with the goal of building hip print shops that go above and beyond to support their clients. They love showing off our clients through all available channels. This means their clients can be found in our catalogues, flyers, website and social media platforms. Uno is located in Saskatoon and Regina. The Kinsmen Club in Saskatoon is a local group planning supporting initiatives to help local not-for-profits! 

Once again, we are so thrilled the results from this year! 

The event committee is excited to see this event evolve each year and we are excited to set our goals even higher for next year! More restaurants? New and exciting contests for our patrons? A corporate challenge? No one knows what 2021 will bring for sure, but we know for sure – it will be covered in gravy and cheese!

YXE Poutine Week began in 2016 and has seen leaps and bounds of growth throughout the city of Saskatoon and surrounding area. Each participating restaurant creates a signature poutine dish inspired by their roots that they will sell over the course of the week. 

The primary funds of raised from this event go towards different programming offered by Big Brothers Big Sisters of Saskatoon and Area. Big Brothers Big Sisters of Saskatoon and Area Inc. is a community supported organization committed to the healthy development of children and youth and their families through quality volunteer mentoring relationships. Big Brothers Big Sisters of Saskatoon and Area is constantly working to enable life-changing mentoring relationships to ignite the power and potential of young people. Mentorship is two-way, learning and development partnership where the young person needs are placed at the centre. Because young people’s brains are still developing, mentoring can support that process through back-and-forth interaction like the volley in a good game of ping-pong. Mentoring is an important way to give youth experience with these essential back-and-forth relationships, developing them into healthy young people better able to deal with and overcome life’s adversities. 

The programming offered by Big Brothers Big Sisters of Saskatoon and Area aims to help youth who are facing adversities and are in need on additional consistent and supportive developmental relationship. By intentionally recruiting and matching young people to professionally screened volunteers, the Match Support Coordinators can monitor, support, and train the mentors, mentees, and families. By focusing on the developmental relationships and searching for signs of expressing care, challenging growth, providing support, sharing power, and expanding possibilities, young people can realize their full potential in one or all of three categories including social emotional competence, mental health & wellbeing and/or educational engagement & employment readiness. 

Big Brothers Big Sisters of Saskatoon and Area provides the following programming:  

Community-Based 

• Big Brother/Big Sister/Big Siblings
• Couples Match
• Big Buddy
• PRISM 
• The Circle 

School Based 

• In-School Mentoring

For any specific information on these program, please click here. 

Big Brothers Big Sisters of Saskatoon and Area would like to thank the generous people of Saskatoon and its surrounding area for the 48 years of support. We continue to look forwarding to serving the youth in our community!

Want to be involved in YXE Poutine Week 2021?

Contact Brenley Kroeker at brenley.kroeker@bigbrothersbigsisters.com!