One desk, one valley
About Okanagan Business Directory
Eighteen communities, checked one business at a time.
Okanagan Business Directory is a business directory for the Okanagan Valley, and every listing on it is checked by hand before it goes up. This page explains why the site exists, how a listing gets researched, and what to do if something here has gone stale.
What makes this one different
Three Things I Do Not Bend On
I would rather set out the rules than leave you to work them out from the entries.
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I write every entry myself
Each entry is written from scratch once I have checked the place is real and still open. The index grows a few at a time because of that, which is slower and worth it.
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No chains, no franchises
A national brand has plenty of other ways to be found. This is for the places with one address, where the owner is usually the person behind the counter.
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Tell me when I am wrong
If it is your business and I have a detail wrong, send me a note and it gets changed. Your word beats my notes every time.
Why This Exists
I started this because the valley was being covered by feeds nobody had walked. A renter looking for a place to eat in Keremeos, an owner trying to find a plumber in Lumby, a family deciding whether to move to Naramata: all of them were being handed a list of names scraped from somewhere else, with hours copied from a page that had not been updated since the place closed. That is not a directory. It is a cache.
The directories that already covered the Okanagan Valley were mostly scraped, and you can tell. Half the entries are for places that shut two years ago, and the descriptions could fit any city in the country.
I would rather say this plainly than bury it. The whole site is written under a single editorial byline, mine, so every guide and listing note on here comes off one desk with one set of standards behind it.
Who Is Writing This
I have spent most of my adult time here on the water and on the trails rather than in a car, which is a slow but effective way to learn a valley. Paddleboarding takes you along the shorelines at the speed a town actually reveals itself, and the hiking puts you above the orchards and the bench roads where most of the argument about this place gets settled. Between the two, I have eaten in a lot of these kitchens and had a lot of these conversations.
That is the only qualification behind the listings here. I am not an algorithm with a spreadsheet, and I would rather leave a field blank than fill it with something guessed. When a phone number cannot be confirmed, it is missing rather than approximate. When a business closes, the page should come down, and telling me is the fastest way to make that happen.
What Is Actually on Here
The listings are real businesses, checked, sorted by category and neighbourhood. Nobody crosses the valley on a Tuesday for a haircut, so where a place sits matters nearly as much as what it is.
Around the listings there are guides to the things people genuinely search for locally: where to eat, what is open on a long weekend, which trails and parks are worth the walk, and what to do when it rains for nine days straight. I rank things and say why, because a guide that likes everything is no use to anyone.
Before an entry goes live
Checked by hand, written in the Okanagan Valley
Checked means something specific here, and it is worth being plain about the limits. Every entry was researched against the business's own website or its Google listing before it went up, and anything that could not be confirmed was left blank rather than guessed at. That is why you will see listings with no phone number and no hours: an empty field is honest, an invented one is not.
What it does not mean is that I have stood outside every door. Hours change, businesses close, and a directory that claims otherwise is lying to you. If something here is wrong, the correction form is the fastest way to fix it and I read everything that arrives.
Written in the Okanagan Valley is the other half, and it is the half that takes longer. The sentences have to come from someone who knows which plaza entrance is off the side street, where the parking turns bad after four, and which stretch of road is faster on foot. A description that would sit just as happily on a page about the next town over is not finished, so it comes back to me instead of going up.
None of that makes the site infallible. Hours move, kitchens close, and a place I checked in March can be gone by June. It does mean that when something on here is wrong, one person got it wrong and one person can fix it.
How listings work
Free to Be Listed, Easy to Correct
Being on here costs nothing, and I would much rather be corrected than be wrong.
Free to Be Listed
You send the details, I check them, and the page goes up. It costs nothing and no business is held back for not paying. There is a paid Premium listing if a business wants its name higher up and a badge beside it, and that is said on the page where it is sold.
Claim Your Own Page
If the business is yours, claim the page and correct it: the hours, the phone number, the fact that you moved across the plaza in March.
Corrections Come First
You tell me an entry is wrong and I fix it. There is a contact form for exactly that, and those go to the front of the queue.
the Okanagan Valley, British Columbia
Learn More about Our Community
The guides follow what is happening around the Okanagan Valley through the year, while the directory gathers every business checked for these pages, so both are good places to keep going once you have finished here.
Run a business here?
Add It to the Directory
Listings are free, and I check every one by hand before it goes live. Send me the details and tell me what makes the place worth the drive.