GASLIGHT CAFÉ
Gaslight Café has opened a location in Sydney after coffee shop in Louisbourg closes for season
The challenge of moving to year-round service.
Down the Louisbourg Highway on the outskirts of Sydney, the Gaslight Café has found a second home.
Earlier this year, the café opened in the former home of the Fortress View restaurant in Louisbourg and quickly attracted a loyal following.
As the tourism season wound down in early October, Gaslight Café owner Bryden Mombourquette sought out a location that could support a year-round operation.
The café opened on George Street in Sydney, across from the Cape Breton Regional Hospital, on Nov. 16.
“We had a ton of regulars in Louisbourg. It’s just that once the winter comes around there’s a lot of people who leave,” said Mombourquette, 34, who runs the café with his partner, Nathan Park. “I hadn’t really figured out who was staying and who was going. We thought we would serve people better by just having a little bit more volume. (Louisbourg residents) have been very generous to continue to come and support us.”
The plan is to reopen the café in Louisbourg in May, leaving Mombourquette to “bounce back-andforth” between both operations.
In the Sydney café on a back wall, a large map of Louisbourg’s front street offers patrons a look, and a bit of a history lesson, on some familiar and other not-sowell-known landmarks in the fishing village.
“We didn’t put any businesses on this (map) because it wasn’t about a business but about a town and about non-profits. We wanted to bring awareness to people that were doing good things that just needed a volume of people to help support it.”
He said he wants to keep a strong connection between this café and its original spot in the building that’s known as the Louisbourg Market.
Right now in Sydney there are two full-time baristas and a part-time kitchen assistant working alongside Mombourquette and Park. There is another helper in Louisbourg to assist Park in a space set aside to bake beef, chicken and pulled pork pot pies.
It’ll mean a chance to hire more people in the spring when the Gaslight Café is ready to reopen in Louisbourg.
“This past year, Louisbourg was a project. It was something we had to build and work in. It’s done. Now going into the new year we’re going to have more opportunities for staff and that will be a massive help to me.
“My goal is always to be very hands-on and very involved because,
literally what I do, I’m a barista first so to make coffee and wait on people that’s what I actually genuinely enjoy doing.”
Mombourquette takes over the space that was the previous home of pastry shop The Cake Pop Tree.
Cheryl Fraser, who owned the shop, still works in the kitchen occasionally providing baked goods for the café.
She said they came upon their informal partnership by accident.
“Bryden came in to view the shop as a potential renter while I was still a tenant there,” she said. “He mentioned what he was planning to open and asked if I would be interested in talking to him about doing their desserts. We got along right away (and) within a week or so we were talking about menu items.”
Fraser provides treats — oatcakes, cheesecake, shortbread and cupcakes — with the exception of the gluten-free peanut butter cookies that Mombourquette provides.
With a background that includes time spent as a barista at Starbucks in Sydney, he is concentrating on how to set his café apart from others — including opening seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and offering two coffee blends he has crafted himself.
“With coffee shops, people are creatures of habit. To change people’s routines ... can be a challenge but I think if you give people quality and you give people personality and a reason to come in, then people will keep coming back,” he said.