The CHPTA is proud to be the Canadian Sponsor of the IHA Global Innovation Awards (gia) program recognizing overall excellence, business innovation and creative merchandising in home and housewares retailing.  We would like to wish our 2022-23 gia Canadian Award winner Cookery and its owner Alison Fletcher the best of luck as they compete for one of the five gia Global Awards, the Martin M. Pegler Award for Excellence in Visual Merchandising and the gia Digital Commerce Award for Excellence in Online Retailing that will be handed out during the gia Gala Awards Dinner on the evening of Saturday, March 4th during The Inspired Home Show in Chicago.

The gia program was created by the International Housewares Association (IHA) and The Inspired Home Show (formerly the International Home + Housewares Show) to foster innovation and excellence in home and housewares retailing throughout the world. Since the launch of gia in 2000, there have been close to 500 gia retail award winners, from over 50 countries on six continents.

The gia competition is structured on a two-tier level, national and global, to honour independent and multiple location home and housewares retailers for excellence in several business categories:

  • Overall mission statement, vision and strategy
  • Store design and layout
  • Visual merchandising, displays and window displays
  • Marketing, advertising and promotions
  • Customer service and staff training
  • Innovation

Co-sponsoring the country-specific gia award programs with IHA are housewares associations and trade publications worldwide, which sponsor national gia programs in their respective countries.  Each national gia winner is invited to The Inspired Home Show in Chicago, where the global gia jury, consisting of four experts representing Asia, Europe and the Americas, plus a rotating group of co-sponsoring trade publication editors from around the world, will select up to five gia Global Honorees and the winners of the Martin M. Pegler Award for Excellence in Visual Merchandising and the gia Digital Commerce Award for Excellence in Online Retailing.

About Cookery

Cookery is a specialty kitchenware store & cooking class studio focusing on the needs of passionate home cooks in urban ‘boutique’ neighbourhoods. Their first location opened in Toronto’s Roncesvalles neighbourhood in August 2014. Their second location, in North Toronto near Yonge & Eglinton, opened in October 2017. Their Bloor West Village shop opened amid a pandemic in September 2020, soon followed by their Westmount shop in Montreal in November of 2020.  The latest store in the Leslieville area of Toronto opened in June of 2022.

Cookery has a beautiful collection of both heirloom and everyday cookware, kitchen tools, bakeware, barware, dinnerware, serving ware, and cookbooks.  They cater personally to home cooks and cooking-inspired gift givers in their neighbourhoods, and online across Canada.

Their range of products offers high performance and enduring quality, as well as a focus on sustainable materials, local design and/or manufacturing. They strive to provide function, beauty, and inspiration to their customers’ kitchens, while also ensuring value for money in an economically tight time.

All of their cooking classes take place right in the stores ‘when life is normal’.   Cookery’s inhouse chefs build full 3-4 course menus with sommelier paired wines that make the perfect date night or ladies’ night out for foodies. During COVID-19, they introduced live, online, interactive classes done from home.

Cookery believes strongly in being truly involved in their local communities and building strong personal connections with their local customers.  Store colleagues know and live their shop neighbourhoods, and truly understand and love cooking; many are fully trained chefs themselves.  Having small (under 1500 sq. ft.) local community shops allows Cookery to offer a curated collection and deliver unparalleled personal customer service.

Cookery focuses on this same type of commitment with colleagues, ensuring all full-time associates have access to health and dental benefits and, more importantly, a living wage in the communities they serve.

Cookery’s team is available onsite, over the phone, by email, on Instagram & live personal website chat to help fuel culinary inspiration or choose the perfect gift. All of their products are also available on their website: https://cookery-store.ca/.

 About Alison Fletcher, Owner, Cookery

After a successful 19-year career in sales and marketing, working for some of Canada’s biggest companies including Maple Leaf Foods, Tim Hortons, Weston Bakeries, and Burger King, Alison Fletcher chose to go out on her own. Combining her passions for cooking and retail, she decided it was time to apply her business planning skills to a vision of her own. In 2014, she conceived and launched Cookery with a mission to help passionate home cooks and families find everything they need for function, beauty and inspiration in the kitchen. Whether looking for a beautiful wooden bowl, a new cookbook, a non-stick frying pan that actually doesn’t stick, or a full kitchen makeover – Alison and her team are here to help! Once again, best of luck to Alison and her team at the Global gia Awards Gala!