The Moneris® Merchant Spotlight Series is dedicated to highlighting Canadian businesses thriving amidst an ever-changing landscape. Featuring exclusive interviews, learn more about the entrepreneurs behind the scenes, their stories of how they got their businesses off the ground, what it really takes to achieve success, and what the next steps could look like for a resilient future.
Get the scoop on The Workshop Vegetarian Café and The Plant Based Workshop with co-owner, Mayumi Bae.
- Where: North Vancouver, British Columbia
- What: Asian-inspired vegan and vegetarian food brand
- Product: IPP320
- Time with Moneris: Since 2016
What’s the backstory behind your first business, the Workshop Vegetarian Café?
I started the café with my older brother, Tak. We come from an immigrant family, born in Japan, raised in Vancouver. Our little sister, Hanaca, who was born in Vancouver, joined the business a little later. Growing up in Canada, it had always just been my siblings and our parents. Food was a central part of our family. It’s how my parents honoured our Japanese roots, and it always brought our family closer together.
Around the time our father passed, which was a little over 10 years ago, I was a stay-at-home mom, dealing with personal health challenges after the birth of my second child. In my grief, and to take better care of myself, I turned to a plant-based lifestyle. It was life-changing and reignited my passion for cooking. But I wanted to keep eating the foods that I grew up with and finding delicious plant-based alternatives proved difficult. So, in 2016, Tak and I opened the Workshop Vegetarian Café in the hopes of filling that gap, incorporating traditional Japanese flavours with plant-based cooking.
How did opening the café lead you to start the Plant Based Workshop?
We really wanted to prove that plant-based food could be delicious. Our mission was focused on creating a menu that would appeal to everyone (even those who were not vegan or vegetarian) because we believe that good food is just simply that – good food. We started out with ramen and had some great recipes from our childhood that we could easily recreate into plant-based dishes.
We had such a big demand right away, and our community really showed up for us. When the pandemic hit a few years later, people wanted to keep supporting us and were keen to enjoy our food from home. We decided to pivot our recipes to be freezer-safe and sold it from the café. Very shortly after, a few retailers and grocery stores got word of our product and today they are distributed nationwide throughout Canada, in-store and online. More recently, we launched our shelf-stable line of food products and are also serving our food at post-secondary institutions like the University of British Columbia andSimon Fraser University, under The Plant Based Workshop brand.
Let’s talk about the food
Our café menu offers a variety of options, from savoury ramen and udon noodles to bouncy bao buns and chewy mochi cakes – all renditions of traditional Japanese foods, with a western flair. Through the Plant Based Workshop, we carry a line of frozen broth and organic, vegan ramen noodles. Newer to our shelf-stable offerings is the mochi cake mix, which combines traditional western cake with the dense and chewy texture of the Japanese mochi.
While we are most known for our spicy tan-tan ramen noodles, the mochi cake is my favourite product. My kids were the inspiration for this dish, and it has been really special for me to introduce these new flavours and textures during birthdays and gatherings and see everyone really enjoy it.
Did you always see yourself becoming a business owner?
I always had an entrepreneurial spirit. Although, my father’s passing really fueled that need to do something greater. Getting the opportunity to build a brand and business that brings together my Japanese heritage and Canadian upbringing has been such a beautiful journey. On top of that, being a business owner, a mother, and a woman, has really given me a newfound respect for women in business. And through my plant-based journey, I felt even more motivated to create and offer something diverse to this space.
What are your future plans for the Plant Based Workshop?
We’re always looking to grow our products, refine our business strategy, and make improvements, whether that means growing our shelf-stable line through our website or expanding into new markets. We are also hoping to continue our focus on foodservice at post-secondary institutions. Most importantly, we want to enhance our brand identity and continue making plant-based food a more accessible and desirable option for everyone.
Why Moneris?
Moneris has been our payment processor since we opened the café in 2016. Tak did quite a bit of research to keep our options open, but we found that Moneris had one of the fastest processing times compared to its competitors. This was super important to us because we anticipated that we’d be quite busy when we opened the café – which is exactly what happened. So, it was important that our processing and turnaround times were as fast as possible to keep up with our customers.
What Moneris products are you currently using?
We are currently using the IPP320 terminal.
Overall thoughts?
We’ve continued to work with Moneris over the last nine years because they’re a service we can rely on. We have never dealt with any major issues that disrupted our ability to process payments and run our business. Usually, if we do have to contact a supplier or a utility, it’s because we’ve had a problem. But with Moneris, once the initial setup was done, the terminal essentially ran itself.
Check out the Workshop Vegetarian Café, and the Plant Based Workshop, here.
Did you know?
Mayumi was one of ten recipients of Visa’s She’s Next Grant Program for The Plant Based Workshop. The grant, coupled with access to an accelerated mentorship program through York University, aims to support the growth and success of woman-owned businesses. You can hear more about Mayumi’s experience winning the grant on Moneris’ Just Good Business Podcast.
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