The cafe behind the concealed windows below the Royal Inland Hospital clinical services building is one Natalie Peace-Young has been planning for more than a decade.
For the past several months, motorists have driven past the new, empty storefront on busy Columbia Street but, beyond the sidewalk, Peace-Young’s vision for a spa-inspired eating experience has been taking shape.
More than just a food dream, ahhYaY is carving out a new kind of restaurant category with its classification as a Wellness Cafe, which includes an ethically sourced, dairy-free, grain-free menu.
Holistically designed and thoughtfully executed, ahhYaY is the result of several years of research and investment by Peace-Young, who teaches in the School of Business and Economics at Thompson Rivers University and formerly owned the Booster Juice franchises in Kamloops.
Along the way she met her husband, Zach, who has become an entrepreneur in his own right helping her bring her concept to life.
Down to the finest details — tables made of reclaimed wood from Vancouver Island, advanced equipment purchased at numerous auctions, furniture sourced from Kickstarter, state-of-the-art appliances hand picked at food and beverage conferences south of the border — there’s no corner of the cafe that hasn’t required significant thought.
That is evident as Peace-Young takes a minute to survey the room that will welcome customers in less than a month.
“I played the long game. You don't hear of people doing that, they want it all now,” she said. “To be now a month away, not even, from opening, I can't even tell you the emotion that is inside of me. It’s come from so much love — and pain — and it's right here and it looks better than we could have thought.”
Playing the long game meant years of planning for Peace-Young, who first wrote the business plan for a wellness cafe as a broke university student studying in Kamloops about 14 years ago.
Grappling with a significant loss, going through a self-described early life crisis and struggling to eat healthy, she started to envision a space that soothed the soul and nourished the body.
With no money to start her own business, she decided to go the franchise route to build the equity to open a cafe of her own design.
Peace-Young opened her first Booster Juice on Summit Drive a year before graduating with her business degree. She opened another in Lansdowne Village and purchased the Aberdeen Mall kiosk before selling all three locations in 2011.
“I grew the goal to build and sell the Booster Juices to get the equity out so, eventually, I could do this,” Peace-Young said.
“The thought for a wellness cafe is that everything is intentionally designed, so the atmosphere being uplifting, positive and rejuvenating, as a space for people who live busy lives, to give them a place to come and feel uplifted and hopefully they take a moment and just be present.”
Locally sourced, premium ingredients are a big part of the concept, from vegetables to meat. Healthy food available in a quick-serve environment is something Peace-Young says is still lacking in the fast food market, and a gap they can hope to fill.
Everything will be made from scratch, in house and chef David Tombs from Terra Restaurant has collaborated with Peace-Young to perfect the menu.
They wanted to make sure dairy-free, grain-free food didn’t taste like cardboard, but they also want it to be appealing and accessible for people who don’t have a plant-based diet, people who enjoy their meat and potatoes.
“Our intention is to be a space that's not intimidating because you know how it can be, when you have to speak that language and be a certain body type almost — that’s not going to help people,” she said.
Peace-Young even wants the name, ahhYaY, to give guests a sense of calm, inspired by a feeling of relief and a feeling of joy. With a location in such close proximity to the hospital, these entrepreneurs think ahhYaY Wellness Cafe has the opportunity to spread a ripple of bliss.
“We think we're going to get a lot of customers who are carrying really heavy loads with the hospital and we feel like there is an opportunity to give them a break from that.”
Ahh Yay is set to open in about a month, but has no official date. They are running a hiring event on Saturday, Feb. 10. Interested applicants can drop off a resume between 10 a.m. and 2:30 p.m.
