The Drake has a longstanding commitment to Art + Culture alongside community engagement and world class hospitality. As a hospitality company with deep roots in our communities, we care deeply about our neighbours, our partners and suppliers, and take our responsibilities to our employees and cultural collaborators seriously. Our properties are deeply entrenched in the neighbourhoods where we set up shop, and it is the vibrancy of these people and places that create a truly immersive experience for our guests. We believe strongly that helping these communities thrive is essential to a meaningful hospitality experience. The Drake strives to create environments that are inclusive and inspiring.

The Drake is devoted to fostering community, both for our guests and our staff, by creating welcoming environments, having open hearts and minds, and providing places that encourage everyone to gather and engage. In keeping with our civic-minded spirit, a Drake priority from the very first day our flagship opened on West Queen West has been to establish meaningful relationships with our community, giving back through several programs and initiatives. Over the years, we have established many important partnerships within our pillars of culture, community, and hospitality. Our many partnerships aim to combine these passions and pursuits into impactful programs and outreach. More recently, by focusing our efforts though of notable partners SKETCH, The Stop, and CFCC, we are leveraging what we do best and supporting programs that nurture community hubs and share The Drake’s vision of creating an inclusive hospitality-driven experience for all.

The Drake is a creative incubator, connecting the public with artists working in all media, whether they’re from across town or on the other side of the world through an eclectic and constantly changing program of performance and visual art, in addition to an ever-growing permanent art collection. The Drake believes there is a curious culture seeker in everyone, and one of our main goals is to support creative expression and the transformative power of the arts by providing an entry point for guests to make meaningful connections with the art community. With this in mind, we’ve partnered with our neighbours at SKETCH, a community arts enterprise located in our West Queen West neighbourhood. Their 9,000 square foot Creative Hub immerses diverse young people navigating poverty, living homeless or otherwise on the margins to build leadership and self-sufficiency through visual arts, culinary arts, music recording, dance and performance. SKETCH’S Creative Hub plays a vital role in the ecosystem of social supports that exist to transition youth out of homelessness and away from poverty in our city.

Starting in 2016, The Drake has committed $20,000 in-kind over a four-year period to the SKETCH 2020 Visionaries Program. This involves the active engagement of a representative from the Drake’s executive team in the SKETCH programs, allowing the team at The Drake to gain a deeper understanding of how SKETCH programs are positioned to make real change in the world while being grounded in community arts.

The objective is to fund the SKETCH Community Artist Program, a year-long paid internship program that allows SKETCH to hire emerging artists experiencing poverty and marginalization, directly impacting the lives of youth at a pivotal point in their journey as artists and entrepreneurs. The program enables young people to build and refine their artistic portfolios, learn community arts-based facilitation skills, and immerse themselves in business planning strategies, helping them become leaders in the community.

In 2017, shortly after the Drake Commissary opened, The Drake and SKETCH partnered on a 10-week Culinary Internship Program, which culminated in a public catered event in celebration of SKETCH’s 20th Anniversary. The internship program was developed as a collaboration between our executive sous chef and the programming team at Sketch. The paid intern had access to and mentorship from the talented culinary team at the Commissary, through pastry and baking, to fermentation and preserves. Currently in development is a Curatorial Internship Program, which will bring an intern from the SKETCH program through 10 weeks of preparatory training for work in the field of arts administration. 

In 2019, The Drake launched an annual juried public art competition for SKETCH youth, which includes as honorarium for artist fees and materials. The Drake has also committed to donating proceeds from Poetry Slams and other programming initiatives to support SKETCH’s fundraising efforts. These programs are supported in conjunction with our partners at Indie88 to help spread the word.

As a restaurant group that feeds many people, The Drake recognizes the need to have healthy delicious meals made more accessible to all. Far too many people in the city cannot afford to put food on the table for themselves and their families due to systemic issues around food security, much less a night out at one of our restaurants.

The Drake has partnered with both The Stop and Community Food Centres Canada to bring awareness around important issues of access to healthy meals and food security in Canada. CFCC builds vibrant, financially stable community food centres that offer high-impact food programs in welcoming community spaces that bring people together to grow, cook, share, and advocate for good food. The model was developed at The Stop in Toronto’s west end, and has since expanded its footprint across the country as a national leader in food security and social justice in low-income communities across Canada. The Drake shares in the belief that good food can be a transformative force in low-income communities.

The Stop is a Toronto-based non-profit that strives to increase access to healthy food in a manner that maintains dignity, builds health and community, and challenges inequality. From its origins as one of Canada’s first food banks, The Stop has blossomed into a thriving community hub where neighbours participate in a broad range of programs that provide healthy food, foster social connections, build food skills, and promote civic engagement.

The culinary team at The Drake are proud participants Chefs for Change, a mid-winter dinner series and chef collaboration featuring phenomenal food made by dozens of Canada’s best chefs, with net profits going to CFCC. All Drake Properties are also involved in the annual Restaurants for Change event and have collectively raised over $500,000 for CFCC over the past 5 years. At The Stop’s spring Big Night event, guests gather to enjoy a magnificent family-style meal inspired by classic Italian home cooking and prepared by some of the city’s finest chefs. Since the first Big Night in 2009, over 3,500 guests have raised $1,654,710 for The Stop’s community programs.

At the annual Barn Burner Hockey Game, The Drake brings together top chefs coast to coast in Prince Edward County for an exhibition hockey game + dinner in support of CFCC.

On a weekly basis, the culinary team at the Drake Commissary set aside soup stock, meat trim, and day-old bread (est. 20 loaves/week and 30L/week) to support The Stop’s drop-in meal program Davenport location, which serves over 350 people daily.

The Drake has also committed to donating proceeds from 86’D Industry Nights and other programming initiatives to support The Stop’s fundraising efforts, as well as through event catering and paid employee volunteer opportunities at The Stop’s Annual Night Market.

Every November, the Drake General Store is proud to launch a signature onesie print in partnership with the brave young people undergoing treatment at Sick Kids. Each year, a unique print is specially selected by the Sick Kids ambassadors. Once this unique edition of holiday onesies hits the shelves, 10% of these proceeds in store and online go directly to the Sick Kids Foundation. Through the year, the funds raised through the Drake General Store and Drake Properties Onesie programs support SickKids highest priority needs. Since 2016, these funds have helped fund the renovation of image-guided therapy suites into state-of-the-art hybrid intervention/imaging facilities. It also gave SickKids the flexibility to replace the over 10-year-old MRI machine in the Cardiac Diagnostic and Intervention Unit. To date, The Drake has raised over $42,000 in support of this worthwhile cause.

This philanthropic partnership with the Mount Sinai Foundation aims to fulfill many of our mandates concurrently: investing in our communities, supporting the arts and watching in wonder how the arts transforms our thinking and wellbeing, creating environments that are safe and nurturing, and giving back. A longstanding tradition of investing deeply in community engagement and employee well being, and supporting Arts + Culture though its Drake Art program. Our Founder and CEO Jeff Stober passionately believes in building bridges within our communities, creating safe and nurturing environments and philanthropically helping those less fortunate by way of the vast resources our company has at its disposal.Read more about the Drake’s commitment to the Arts In Health program here.

• Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto Canada (MOCA)
• Canadian Art Foundation
• Canada Pavilion at the Venice Biennale
• The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery
• IMAGES Festival
• Polaris Music Awards
• Red Bull Music
• Nuit Blanche
• Festival Players
• The Mercer Union Gallery
• Gallery TPW x Ryerson University Photorama Prize
• National Ballet of Canada
• Canadian Opera Company

+ more