March Break in Montreal

This week we spent part of the March Break in Montreal. Sometimes—even as an entrepreneur—it’s good to take a little break to recharge and get inspired. For our money, Montreal is one of the best café cities in Canada. There are, of course, a lot of others we’d love to visit and explore, too. Vancouver, Halifax, Calgary—there’s a lot of great cafés in our country. But there is something beautiful and unique about Montreal. Especially Old Montreal, which is where we spent the majority of our time on this trip. 

We got to see the Montreal Biodome, and the amazing Olympic park. We explored Notre Dame Basilica. We enjoyed the smoked meat sandwiches at Swartz’s and the amazing poutine at Chez Claudette. Some of us rode on La Grand Roue de Montreal (Dan stayed firmly on the ground where it is safe and joyous). The city has a great food, arts, and culture scene. 

But while we were there, we were especially looking to check out some of the cafés. And the donut shops, of course. One of the coolest things about visiting other cities now is learning the stories of amazing entrepreneurs who have built their own businesses in the same sector that we're so passionate about. It’s a really special thing to talk to some of these entrepreneurs, see their set up, and the choices they’ve made down the long road to success. Some of them are very early in their journeys—like us—and some of them are old time pros who appear to have it all figured out. There’s many things to learn from all of them.

We visited Crew Collective and Café, which has been retrofitted from the old Royal Bank of Canada headquarters. It’s a pretty stunning location just from a pure beauty perspective. It has these incredibly high ceilings, natural light and general vintage bank aesthetic feel. It is vaguely Harry Potter-esque. The food and coffee were good, although a bit expensive. A big part of it is the experience and the visual appeal. We also visited Café Sat. It was cool to see our very own Nuova Simonelli being used in the wild. It’s a great machine that has served us well.

We visited the Café at La Grand Roue de Montreal. Incredibly delicious cheesecake and the iced coffee was great, too. We also visited the Villeray location of Café Saint-Henri. Kass lived in Quebec City for a few years and worked for their St-Roch location. It was a cool experience for her to visit the headquarters in Montreal, as she had never been. Each location for Saint-Henri is very unique in design and feel. This one was mostly made from concrete with a large room for roasting, a meeting room, and an area for growing microgreens.

And of course, we had to take a donut tour of the city, too. We won’t get into where we visited for donuts in this blog post because we made a TikTok of our donut tour around Montreal. This video will be posted soon. So far we’ve done these donut tour TikToks for Chicago, Toronto, Los Angeles, and now Montreal. We love donuts. We love the donut industry. We love people who make donuts. We love people who eat donuts. While moderation is always a good idea, treating yourself to a donut once in a while is also always a good idea. You deserve it. (You can watch our donut city tour TikToks below).

Overall, Montreal is a beautiful city with lots to offer. We are feeling recharged, inspired, and excited to get back to the grind. After every trip, we find ourselves starting to morph into Dorothy-mode—“There’s no place like home”. We came back home to have a wonderful day at the Soo Market on Saturday. 

Kass has also been experimenting in the lab with some new Spring donut flavours—which we will be launching soon! This includes the special one day only ‘Lucky Delight’ for St. Patrick’s day (March 17th). ☘️ See you at the shop!