CAFÉ CONCEPT
Seesaw Café’s unique concept combines snacks, workshop and a chance to connect
Woodworking and handicrafts served up with a side of coffee at Toronto’s Seesaw Café,
The city is flush with cafés open to laptop-oriented patrons tapping away at their digital work. But few resemble the Seesaw Café: snacks, coffee, a space to do hands-on work and sell handicrafts too.
Entrepreneur Katie Reed launched the hybrid café, which sits at the top of Ossington Ave. on Davenport Rd., last June. She’s still fine-tuning her unique concept.
Reed began her professional life far from where she ended up: a degree in English and anthropology was followed by travelling, then a mix of jobs back in Toronto: offices, restaurants and bars. Then she began working for a woman who created handmade letters.
Reed didn’t adore the country-craft style, but found resonance working with her hands. “Oh, you can have a job doing this?” she recalled marvelling at the time.
But she still needed her “thing.” She found it when she took in a pair of boots to be repaired. The smell of leather, the dark workshop and tools and importantly, the ecological value of fixing instead of throwing out all enticed her to cobbling. “This is amazing,” she’d thought.
She mentored with a cobbler who taught her the craft. Once the mentorship was over, she opened her own shop: Sole Survivor in Kensington Market in 2009.
The shop did well and Reed considered it “super-satisfying work.” But her creative spark eventually needed to move on. “I loved it, but there are a lot of things to love,” she said.
In 2013, she sold the store to her assistant, did a little travelling, and decided to try woodworking. “I knew nothing about it,” she said. Reed got connected to Forever Interiors, which makes furniture from reclaimed wood and began learning in its workshop. While she had no experience, her hands knew how to work with tools and many of the fundamentals were the same as crafting leather.
After six months, she was ready to go out on her own, but had no desire to lock herself up in a workshop.
“I’m used to having my customer to talk to,” she said.
The idea for merging café culture with her need to interact — but also work — led her to the workshop/ café/store concept.
She found a large storefront on Davenport that was perfect: It was huge and the basement had a sizable unfinished portion that was ideal for her workshop.
While her drills and saws stay hidden in the basement, the upstairs — a converted beauty salon that’s now a café with kitchen facilities — features small tables and a large work table.
Customers come in with laptops and friends, but also knitting, games and puzzles. Along with selling coffee and snacks, Reed displays her wood products — plant holders, utensils, cheese boards and small pieces of furniture that she makes out of scraps from her old employer — and other handicrafts from companies such as Nightshift Ceramics and Worthy Co.
The café really comes into its own when Reed hosts events, most of which are in line with her philosophies of promoting creativity, preferably with a green angle. She’s held vendor markets and repair days (there’s a free one coming up on Feb. 7).
The only problem with Reed’s concept is that it keeps her out of her workshop. Right now, she needs to be above ground, serving coffee and chatting with patrons.
As the café grows and she’s able to take on some help, she’ll have more time for her craft. For now, she’s an entrepreneur trying to do it all.