Night Oat, the evening version of Ottawa breakfast spot Oat Couture, launched in April, allowing the cafe to stay open late into the evening. (Photo provide by Oat Couture)
For most coffee shops, the day typically ends in the early evening, just as neighbouring bars and restaurants come to life. But some local cafes like Oat Couture are experimenting with ways to reach the nighttime crowd and keep their doors open later.
Ottawa’s Oat Couture built its reputation as a popular breakfast spot, best known for its selection of sweet and savoury oatmeal dishes. But in 2019, owner Brian Montgomery decided it was time to go beyond breakfast and lunch and target the evening crowd for the first time. The cafe, located at 1154 Bank St. in Old Ottawa South, would no longer close to customers in the early evening. Instead, the space would transform into a swanky nighttime destination called the Montgomery Scotch Lounge. “We changed the whole environment,” Montgomery told OBJ this week. “We put our staff in different uniforms, we dimmed the lights, we changed the music. We found a woman to do custom leather seating to go on top of our chairs so it would be a more comfortable experience. We wanted people to stay.”For most coffee shops, the day typically ends in the early evening, just as neighbouring bars and restaurants come to life. But some local cafes like Oat Couture are experimenting with ways to reach the nighttime crowd and keep their doors open later. That’s what Montgomery wanted when Oat Couture introduced the Montgomery Scotch Lounge. “We wanted to extend the day,” Montgomery said. “We really felt that what’s super important, and I will stress this, is that you have to make it seem like you’re in a nighttime experience. If you make it seem like it’s a daytime cafe just now you’re serving food, in my view, it’s disingenuous. We’re in the business of delivering experiences.”Since then, the Montgomery Scotch Lounge has moved to Gladstone Avenue alongside a second Oat Couture cafe. For Montgomery, the move opened up an opportunity to once again try something new at the original Bank Street location. “We were still kicking people out at five o’clock and closing the doors,” he said. “Given what the offerings were in that neighbourhood, we really felt there was an opportunity for us at nighttime.”In April, he launched Night Oat, another endeavour that flips the space in the evening, this time serving small plates and cocktails as well as local beer and a curated selection of wines. “We call it an evening cafe, because it’s not a bar,” he said. “It’s for those people who are just going out or just coming home,” he said. “It’s that sort of happy hour crowd.”In addition to drawing in more customers and additional revenue, Montgomery said it’s a positive change for employees. With the current cost of living, he said many of his younger staff have been looking for ways to work more hours, something the evening cafe allows them to do. This month, Night Oat will launch its permanent menu, which Montgomery said has a lot of Spanish influence. Once that happens, he said the brand will double down on marketing to drive traffic. “We’re doing this every night and, you know, we’re taking a hit, for sure. The traffic isn’t there yet, but it will be. We’ll stick with it,” he said. “(The community) loves that we’re back. They love that we have another offering where they can come in and have a drink with a friend, or if your sister or brother is in town and you want to go for a drink away from the kids. We’ve had a great response.”He added that all three of the brands he’s created – Oat Couture, Night Oat and the Montgomery Scotch Lounge – offer something different, allowing him to broaden his clientele. “We really think we have three different distinct brands and you can visit all three brands in one day,” he said. “We’re moving with our clientele.”
An ancient business model
For some local cafes, keeping the doors open late into the evening has been part of the business model from the very beginning. When Wise Town Cafe opened at 329A Elgin St. last year, it advertised itself from the get-go as a cozy coffee spot by day and a charming cocktail bar by night. From Sunday to Thursday, the shop is open from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. and stays open even later to 1 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays to accommodate weekend night owls. Both versions of the cafe have seen success drawing in crowds. “I think it goes to show how different the two scenes are,” said events manager Carrie Blair. “During the day you see so many laptops and at night there’s none at all. You’ll have a few students trying to cram their essay that’s due at midnight, but besides that, it’s a lot of first dates, cocktails – it’s really cute.”Carrie Blair is the events manager at Wise Town Cafe. (Photo by Mia Jensen)For the most part, Blair said the cafe, which includes an outdoor patio in the summertime, remains unchanged from day to night. But to set the mood and transition into the evenings, the lights are dimmed, something she said makes it feel “almost like two different places.”From a logistical perspective, Blair said running a cocktail bar isn’t much different from running a cafe. Wise Town sells alcohol throughout the day and staff are all Smart Serve certified and trained as both baristas and bartenders. “At the end of the day, I feel like it’s all making drinks and serving people,” she said. “If you’re good at both those jobs, then yeah. As long as you’re a morning person and a night person. That might be the hardest part.”Wise Town is the brainchild of Duffy Merza. Merza said the idea for an all-day cafe is inspired by the lifestyle of ancient Bablyonians, who tended to work from early in the morning to late at night but took frequent short breaks throughout the day to eat and drink at nearby community hubs. “In all these mini breaks, they go to what we call today a cafe,” he said. “It had a different name and I can’t claim to say the name because no one can know what the voices sounded like at the time. This place we call a cafe delivered coffee at the time. Everyone was going there. They were exchanging experiences about their work, stories, jokes and drinking beer. But it wasn’t about the drinking or the food. It was about the relationships, the communication. They knew each other from that place. They were spending time and making friends at that place.”He opened his first Babylonian-inspired cafe in Dubai with the goal of providing that kind of experience. Later, he immigrated to Canada with his family and last year decided to do the same thing in Ottawa with Wise Town. For Merza, local is a priority. From the curated selection of local wines, the pastries and macarons and the imported but locally roasted coffee beans, Merza said he went out of his way to make sure everything in the shop was locally made or sourced where possible, including building materials and furniture. “I’m very Canadian. I love this country and I respect it,” he said. “And I love this city, this vibe of Ottawa. I have twin kids who are 10 years old and I asked them, ‘What do you think we should name a business, a cafe, started here?’ With all the government, this country from coast to coast to coast, (is) all managed from this city. And they said, ‘Oh my God. She is a wise town.’ They came up with that name.”On Elgin Street in Ottawa’s original downtown, Wise Town is well situated to draw in the late night crowds. According to Blair, the area is one of the liveliest parts of the city on a Friday night. “There’s so many nighttime Ottawa staples on this street,” she said. “There’s just a bunch of great bars that have so much Ottawa history on the street and that’s very beneficial. To the community, to us, people are always walking by and to the downtown area. It just brings more life to it.”
Looking for ways to stay open
While evening hours work for some cafes, most local shops continue to close early. Happy Goat Coffee Company, which has more than a dozen shops and kiosks across the city, starts brewing in the morning and locks the doors at most locations between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m.According to owner Henry Assad, it isn’t always easy to stay open later, especially for a growing chain like his. “As far as after five o’clock, we’ve been trying that for a long time and to be honest it didn’t always work out,” he said. “I think it’s a cultural thing. It’s not really subjective to the cafes. In Canada in general, not just Ottawa, we go to a cafe to have coffee and quick bites. I think we’re stuck culturally. In our head, we can’t go there and have a glass of wine or baked goods.”But that doesn’t mean Happy Goat isn’t getting creative. For one, the company is looking for ways to expand its event offering, something it used to do a lot more of. Locations opened up their spaces for private events like parties and corporate get-togethers, and hosted their own evening fare, like open mics and small-scale concerts. “In our original location on Laurel Street, we’ve always had events,” said Assad. “We’ve been liquor licensed almost from the get go. We did a lot before COVID hit. For a good five years, we probably did two events a week. It was always active.”Assad said the pandemic disrupted demand, slowing the company’s event offerings and spreading out bookings. But the other challenge has been the company’s own expansion, with multiple new locations popping up around the city over the past several years. “When we started expanding, we spread ourselves a little thin when it came to managing all the different events in different locations,” he said. But that may be starting to change. Happy Goat has started franchising its locations, said Assad, with the goal for almost all its shops to have their own owner-operators in the next few years. It’s a process that’s already started and the difference in the evenings is already noticeable in those locations. “It’s funny, but having an owner-operator actually taking care of their own location and their events and so on proved to be successful,” said Assad. “We can see a little bit of an increase in activities after five o’clock in our cafes and that’s really encouraging.”Hosting more events or even extending hours later into the evening could be a potential revenue driver for the company, according to Assad. Several of its locations are on highly-visible streets like Bank and Elgin, but that visibility comes with a high price tag when it comes to rent. He hopes franchising and increasing activity could subsidize some of the rental costs. “Of course, we don’t turn our cafes into clubs, but it’s a matter of just making sure that we add a little bit of revenue to the cafe,” he said. “It does help paying the rent, paying labour. The main reason for us is actually to help in the payment of the overheads. It takes money, but the main reason is to make sure we are doing it optimally and in a friendly way.”
Culture shifting around nightlife locally
In Ottawa, conversations about how to breathe life into the local nightlife scene have been rife in recent months. Just last month, the city hired its first nightlife commissioner to lead the charge on implementing a multi-year revitalization planned to make the capital a more exciting nighttime destination. Oat Couture’s Montgomery said he’s eager to see what happens in the next few years. “With Ottawa, the nightlife is there,” he said. “The businesses are providing it. They’re taking the risk. They’ve spent the money, hired the employees and created all these incredible spots. Maybe the nightlife commissioner can highlight these places and shed some light on them.”Montgomery added that there’s only so much local government can do. Instead, he’d like to see the community do its part and take the time to find the city's hidden gems, including the unique offerings cafes are putting on at night. “There’s lots of things to do in Ottawa,” he said. “We would not be having these discussions in other cities in North America. People do go out a lot. It’s a cultural shift. I would say, go out more. There’s amazing places to go. While your own backyard might be fantastic, there’s all sorts of reasons already to go out.”
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