Behind the Box: One Tenant at a Time
UPG Property Group
Behind the Box is our series about real corporate orders: what the client needed, what went into it, and how it got there. I’m Leo, and I co-own Vancouver Best Cookies.
Some orders stay with me because of their size. This one stays with me because of how carefully it was planned before we baked anything.
Who UPG is
UPG Property Group, through Uptown Property Group, owns and manages office and retail buildings in New Westminster and downtown Vancouver. It has been doing this since 1987. Its roots are in New Westminster, where it bought what is now Westminster Centre, and it has since grown to include buildings like 675 and 900 West Hastings.
UPG manages the buildings it owns, with its own team on site for maintenance and building care. So for UPG, tenants aren’t account numbers. They’re the businesses its team sees every day in the lobby and the elevators. Many of them have been there for years.
When a company like that decides to thank its tenants at the holidays, the gift has to feel personal. It also has to work in a busy building in December.
What they asked for
In December 2021, UPG ordered holiday cookies for its tenants: 528 cookies, 132 of each of four flavours.
Baking 528 cookies wasn’t the hard part. Sorting them was. Every tenant was getting its own box with its own label. Larger tenants were due more than 12 cookies, so their gifts were split into several boxes. Every one of those boxes was labelled too.
I’ll admit that when I first read the order, I counted the boxes twice. A gift for a whole building can quickly turn into a pile of identical white boxes at a front desk, with someone trying to work out who gets which one. UPG wanted the opposite: every tenant’s gift sorted, labelled and ready to hand over, so their own team had nothing left to work out.
Holding that standard felt like an honour. It’s also the standard we try to hold for every corporate order now.
The morning of delivery
On delivery day, the building was locked when our courier arrived. In December, that can be enough to derail a delivery. The UPG team came down, met our courier at the door, and took everything in one drop, every box already sorted by tenant.
Afterwards, their accounting team needed the receipt reissued with our GST number, so we sent it the same day.
That afternoon, UPG’s Client Services Coordinator wrote to us:
“Thank you for your patience in finding our building this morning and having all the boxes so nicely labeled and ready for delivery.”
“I appreciate all your help with our order and look forward to working with you again soon.”
— Client Services Coordinator, UPG Property Group
Even now, years later, that note means a lot to me. It doesn’t mention the cookies at all. It mentions the labels and the patience. Those are the things that made the gift easy for UPG to give.
What this order taught us
Before UPG, I thought of a holiday gift as a box of cookies. After UPG, I think of it as an order that has to fit into someone else’s operation. Here’s what we took from it:
- Labelling isn’t extra. For a gift to a whole building, the labels are the gift. They let the property team hand out 40 boxes without checking a list.
- Split boxes need their own labels. When a tenant’s gift spans several boxes, each box gets its own label, so nothing gets separated at the front desk.
- Deliveries rarely go to plan in December. We work out the drop-off with the property team ahead of time, and we stay patient on the day.
- Accounting is part of the job. Receipts and invoices should come in the format the client’s office needs, without them having to ask twice.
Planning something similar for your buildings? Tell us about your tenants →
How to plan tenant gifts for your buildings
If you manage a building and want to thank your tenants this year, here’s how we’d set it up with you:
- Send your tenant list. List each unit or tenant with the number of cookies or boxes for each.
- Choose your labels. We’ll label each box with a tenant name or unit number.
- Plan the drop-off. We can make one delivery to your management office, or deliver straight to each building.
- Tell us what accounting needs. We’ll send receipts and invoices in the format your office uses.
Thanking tenants this season? Take a look at the Holiday Special Pack, or ask about individually wrapped cookies for handing out in the lobby or at the front desk.
Thank you, UPG
Thank you to the UPG team for trusting us with a gift for your whole building, and for coming down to unlock the door that morning. It’s still one of the orders I’m proudest of.
— Leo, Vancouver Best Cookies
Send your tenant list through our corporate orders page, and we’ll reply the same day.