Fresh Cup Magazine, providing specialty coffee and tea professionals with unique insight into the trends, ideas, products and people that shape their world.
Issue link: http://freshcup.epubxp.com/i/66983
have a coffee. So I did." Vik says he was "blown away" by the flavor of that memorable cup, deciding on a dime that he loved espresso. As Vik continued to travel for his work as a product developer, he began to notice that every city he visited had at least one great coffee shop—a place he describes as "that third-wave mentality of treating coffee as more of a food, almost like a wine." Frustrated, or perhaps inspired, by the lack of such places in his hometown, he started working on a business plan. Vik quit his job in June and opened Parlour on Sept. 3, 2011. Though Vik may now go by the title "barista" or "entrepreneur," everything at Parlour is still informed by Nils the Architect. Making coffee for a city he loves is a project that encompasses all of him—right down to the space he serves it in. "I wanted to find a building that had really nice bones," Vik says of the downtown building he chose to house his masterpiece. Parlour is nestled in Winnipeg's Exchange District, a collection of industrial buildings from the early 1900s—some abandoned, some coming alive with reinvention. "Part of the reason we chose the name was that the space evokes an old-time, grand feel," Vik says, drawing my atten- tion to the 14-foot-high ceilings and creaky wooden floors. "We just kind of used what was here," he says. It took a painfully long time to get the necessary permits from the city, but there was no thought of finding another spot. "You couldn't recreate this in a strip mall," Vik says. The end product, with its bare white walls and minimal seating, showcases its owner's eye for detail and good design—something he sees as a subculture within coffee, and one partly responsible for drawing him in. He says the shop is, in many ways, his "ultimate design product," from the branding to the menu to the furniture. The millwork and the countertop—a focal point of the shop—are made from reclaimed Manitoba bur oak. The shop isn't easy to access by suburban standards. Located near one of the city's busiest intersections, this is a blink-and- you'll-miss-it kind of place. Despite the thousands of cars Main Street sees each day, in Vik's words, it's still very much a "dead" street. Spoken like a true Millennial, he says that through Parlour, he and his staff hope to inject a bit of life back to the urban center. And that's not all they hope to do. As the only café in town that continued on page 66 Fresh Cup Magazine 65