“We have the ability to service downtown with a fast, quick service mentality where people can grab something on their way to their meetings or as they’re walking through downtown.”
Businesses and non-profit organizations regularly open and move in Saskatoon. Today the StarPhoenix talks to Devereaux Gatin, who opened Café Del Rey recently in the downtown area.
Devereaux has worked in many restaurants over the years, in Saskatchewan and B.C., and even has some food services experience in Southeast Asia. He received his red seal chef designation in Kelowna and has lived in Saskatoon off and on for many years, including the past four, after growing up in Prince Albert.
Devereaux received an opportunity about a year ago to open Café Del Rey, which is connected with Paramount Day Spa on Third Avenue South. He offers quick service options for people on the go and an inviting seating area for those looking for a cozy and relaxing environment.
Q: What is Café Del Rey?
A: We’re a quick service grab-and-go business that offers both food offerings and specialty coffees and teas. We support the downtown area of Saskatoon for a lot of corporate businesses that surround us. We’re a great option for people looking to grab a quick lunch in the downtown core. We’re the only food business between 19th and 20th on Third Avenue, so it kind of makes us unique in that quality.
Q: Why did you open?
A: We operate an additional business in Saskatoon that’s called Postal Pizzas, which is a food truck that operates from May until October. Having a seasonal business, we kind of felt inclined to find other opportunities that would be able to support a full-year operation. After two years of operating Postal Pizzas we found the space on Third Avenue which is connected to Paramount Spa.
We spent time renovating the café to bring a new life to it. It was kind of a means to find full-year employment for staff, but also for myself to be able to have a full-year operation and to continue to grow as an entrepreneur.
Q: What products do you serve?
A: We offer basically your classic list of coffee. We have anywhere from cappuccinos to lattes to Cortados to Americanos as well as in-house made syrups and sauces to make specialty seasonally-driven coffees, such as pumpkin spice or certain seasonally driven syrups.
We were doing some cookies and cream and maple pecan over the summer to kind of echo the flavors of ice cream. Now we’re doing a pumpkin spice latte as well as a bourbon brown sugar latte. We make all those syrups in house.
We offer chai tea lattes as well as matcha and then we use all fair-trade organic teas for our variety of other teas. We offer a selection of different tea lattes. We also offer some steeped tea options using a variety of organic fair trade teas.
Q: What type of coffee do you serve?
A: We exclusively run beans that are roasted by a local business owner, whose name is Caleb Smith. He runs a company called Precision Coffee. We use his coffee both in our batched coffee as well as for our espresso. We love to have a local aspect as well as supporting someone in the city who is an emerging roaster doing high-level coffee.
Q: What’s on your menu?
A: We have some grab-and-go sandwiches, classics like ham and cheese, egg salad and pesto chicken salad. We also offer some paninis or warm sandwiches such as Italian, grilled cheese, veggie and barbeque chicken.
And then we have a few breakfast items that we offer all day as well. We do a breakfast burrito and a breakfast sandwich. Those are great options to pair with a coffee if you’re on your way to work or you have some meetings in the morning and you want to pop in before lunch.
We use local bread in Saskatoon here, from both Earth Bound Bakery and Night Oven Bakery. In addition to that, we are giving a platform to other businesses with our pastries and baked good desserts. We offer some cookies that are made by a local baker in the city.
We are slightly limited in the capacity and size of our café space that we can’t do all of the in-house packing and producing of those things as we’d like, but we’re still not compromising by being able to have some high-level products from other bakers in the city.
A feature item for us would be our breakfast sandwiches and that we are open at 7:30 a.m. If people are looking for an option during their commute or if they work downtown, they can come in and grab something before work.
Q: What atmosphere will people find at Café Del Rey?
A: We have sort of a Latin American and European street-side coffee shop feel. We have limited seating but the seating that we do have is comfortable and cozy vintage couches and chairs. We have warm orange tones within our space to kind of allow for more of a relaxing feel.
We’re connected to Paramount Spa. We are basically an extension of their business where we act as the sunroom of the spa. People come in maybe before they’re coming for an appointment at the spa. They can have a lunch with a friend and then go get a pedicure or get their hair done or have a massage. We offer a nice space for them to come and enjoy a coffee to decompress before they return to their day-to-day routine.
Q: What makes you stand out from other cafés?
A: The aspect that we’re using a local roaster for all of our coffee. We have 100 per cent local coffee from Saskatoon here. But also we have the ability to service downtown with a fast, quick service mentality where people can grab something on their way to their meetings or as they’re walking through downtown. Or if they have time between meetings they can come in and grab an afternoon coffee.
Q: How did you select the name, Café Del Rey?
A: There were a few streams of thought for Café Del Rey. Basically, Rey meaning king. The business that we’re connected to being Paramount Spa, Paramount meaning above others or setting a level of standard for the service they provide. They are kind of setting a ‘paramount level’ amongst their competitors.
For us, we wanted to echo that through being Café Del Rey, loosely translated to the king of coffee or the king’s coffee. We wanted to be paramount in the way that we also approach our coffee, setting a standard and also setting ourselves apart using the high-level beans that we use in our coffee.
Q: What do you love most about operating Del Rey Café?
A: The conversations and the connections to the community. Seeing people able to enjoy the space as much as they enjoy the coffee that we’re giving. Being able to connect with people across Canada in our space is definitely something that makes it feel like we’re doing more than just pouring a cup of coffee.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Café Del Rey
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