Kendra Mazzei is no fortune teller, although you wouldn’t know it from her decision to set up Whistler’s first authorized Apple retail store in early 1996, back when the company was headed towards the brink of bankruptcy and light-years away from becoming the global tech giant it is today.
“I just knew the timing was right and I knew what was happening at Apple with Steve Jobs coming back [as CEO], so when my contract finished at the muni, I launched Burnt Stew," she said.
For close to 30 years, Mazzei and her team of technicians have helped Whistlerites with their Apple products out of her Function Junction retail store. At the end of July, Burnt Stew, the Sea to Sky’s only authorized Apple reseller and service provider, will close the doors to its brick-and-mortar space, before Mazzei transitions to Burnt Stew Consulting Service in the fall.
“For me, it’s all about the people,” Mazzei said of her nearly three decades at Burnt Stew. “It’s about working with all the people I have now and in the past and making something easier for somebody, making something work better, making systems work in the situation.”
To say that Mazzei and her team’s work has evolved since the mid-’90s would be a vast understatement. In those early days, Mazzei was a one-woman show, and, more often than not, her job entailed teaching basic computer skills to her clientele just as much or more than actual IT support.
“In the early days of computers, there was just not a lot of public knowledge of things because, of course, the internet wasn’t readily available, so all people knew in those days was how to sit in front of a computer and type; they really didn’t have the background at all to set things up, to network a computer, to set up a printer, to connect a modem,” she recalled. “I had a background in technology, so I was knowledgeable. I also have a bachelor of education, so I had a teaching degree as well and I had come from a teaching background, having taught graphic design at Sheridan College in Ontario, so it was kind of a perfect storm.”
Through it all, Mazzei had the backing of the community, even when Whistlerites weren’t the most tech-savvy bunch.
“It’s always been collaborative and supportive and the community has grown with us and we have grown with the community,” she said. “It’s just been my total pleasure to be a part of it right from the beginning.”
Mazzei also looks back fondly on the staff who have come through the Burnt Stew doors over the years, from certified technicians to bookkeepers, front-of-house retail staff and even local high schoolers, a couple of which have gone on to launch their own web development companies, she said.
“So amazing, every single person that I worked with. A lot of them are still in town and a lot of them have stayed in the tech industry,” added Mazzei.
Staffing issues are one of the main factors pushing Mazzei to move away from the retail space. Like so many small businesses in Whistler, Burnt Stew has struggled to attract and retain qualified employees in recent years.
“The biggest challenge we’ve seen in the last five years is the staffing. To work with Apple, you have to be a certified Apple technician and you have to go through their certified training program, and in the last five years it’s just been increasingly difficult to staff—and the timing is just good. We want to go out on a high note. We are so happy we’ve had this opportunity,” she said.
After some deserved time off, Mazzei plans to move Burnt Stew into an online-based consulting and IT training company—meaning the closest certified Apple repair and reseller shop will be in North Vancouver. “It’s going to be a big deal,” Mazzei said.
Burnt Stew Consulting Services will maintain the same website going forward: burntstew.bc.ca.
