Last week in Paris, we went to check out the above café called The Coffee. It was our first time. The brand is a Brazilian coffee chain founded in 2017 by three brothers who wanted to combine Japanese minimalism with the best of Brazilian coffee. Brazil, by the way, is the world's largest producer of coffee.

Since then, they've gone on to open nearly 300 stores around the world — from Rio de Janeiro to Paris and Seoul to Sydney. Earlier this year, they opened their first locations in Toronto: on King Street West, in the Financial District, and in Yorkville. And today, I'm excited to share that their next location will be at the base of Junction House.

This feels like a perfect fit for the area and the building. One of the things that we tried to do with the design of the project was blend Canadian minimalism with the rich history of the Junction. So I'm happy to see this brand land here, especially since we (the developer) no longer own the retail component and weren't involved in the leasing. Kudos to Lee Chow Group (the owner) and the JLL Retail Group.

It’s exciting to see a global brand like The Coffee choose the Junction. They clearly know what's up. I'm now looking forward to becoming a loyal customer.

If you'd like to follow them on Instagram, here's their Canadian account.

Cities should do what they can to allow the smallest of interventions.

What I mean by this is that -- when it comes to our urban environment -- small and granular is usually a good thing. It's why our historic main streets tend to be better urban streets than the ones we are creating today from scratch. They were built at a time when cities were more compact and it was more feasible to build small. Now, intuitively, we know this to be true. It's why planners will encourage things like "fine-grained retail" and impose maximum areas for each CRU (commercial-retail unit). It's to try and recreate how things were done before.

But at the same time, we (as cities) also do lots of things that make it more difficult to go small. Every hurdle means that you need that much bigger of a project in order to make it worth while for a developer or small-business owner. Take for example Toronto's current debate over allowing small-scale retail shops in residential neighborhoods. This is a perfect place for smaller businesses. The rents should be lower than on any major street. But only if we don't erect too many barriers.

To this end, here's a project and coffee shop in Córdoba, Argentina that I have liked since it was completed back in 2021. Designed by Estudio Rare, which is one of ArchDaily's Best New Practices for this year, the building is situated on a triangular piece of leftover land created by its orthogonal neighbors. The resulting footprint is only about 4 square meters, which is somewhere around half the size of a typical Toronto condominium bedroom. So it's the kind of "site" that could have been easily forgotten and left to collect garbage. And yet, the architect, client, and operator made something work.

Here's the ground floor plan:

And here's a street view image from May 2024:

Now, I don't know what hurdles the project team had to jump through to build and operate this coffee shop. Maybe there were very few or maybe there were many. If any of you are from Argentina and familiar with the planning landscape, maybe you can let me know. But for the purposes of this post, it doesn't really matter. The simple point is that these kind of small-scale developments are a positive thing for cities. It doesn't matter that the footprint is only half the size of a small bedroom. It's a place to stop for coffee and a place to linger on the street with others.

Images via Estudio Rare

I recently asked this on Twitter:

You live in an apartment/condominium. If you could pick one ideal use/tenant for the ground floor of your building, what would it be?

And a number of people responded.

But I suppose I should also answer my own question.

I lean more towards utility. My ideal use -- assuming an urban storefront -- is not a fancy restaurant or a super cool coffee shop. It would be some sort of quality bodega that:

• Sells essential grocery needs (milk, eggs, toilet paper, etc.)

• Sells wine & beer

• Has a deli/food counter where you can buy a breakfast bagel, a sandwich for lunch, or a quick dinner when you're in a pinch

• And, yes, has pretty good coffee

It would also need to be open early and late: 7am to 12am, please.

What would you want?