From an 18-foot truck to four Toronto cafés
18feet Espresso Bar & The Cheong is a Toronto café brand built around specialty coffee, ceremonial-grade matcha and housemade Korean fruit Cheong — classic craft with a new-energy finish.
An 18-foot coffee truck opens at the University of Toronto.
The first permanent café opens on Gerrard.
Four Toronto cafés, plus catering and a franchise program.
The challenge
The café market is crowded, trends move quickly and every location has a different customer rhythm.
A campus store at 9am and a Midtown store at 3pm are different businesses. The brand needed to stay recognizable while menus, communications and marketing adapted to real operating conditions across four very different neighbourhoods.
A focused product world — not a generic café claim
Specialty Coffee
From a 12-hour cold brew to the Dalgona Latte — the craft baseline the café market demands.
Ceremonial Matcha
Stone-ground and whisked to order, selected to stay present in milk. Leadership in a fast-growing category.
Housemade Cheong
Grapefruit, strawberry, yuja and lemon preserves made in house — a culturally rooted story with broad accessibility.
Cream Cheese Bagels
House flavours from blueberry crunch to Earl Grey and matcha — the reason a coffee run becomes a visit.
AIO’s role
The work connects product development, menu communication, in-store experience, content, events and location-level operations. Because the team is close to daily customer response, decisions can be tested against actual purchasing behaviour and service realities.
- Toronto Metropolitan University86 Gerrard St E
- Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, U of T144 College St
- Midtown Toronto — Davisville1967 Yonge St
- Downtown Toronto — Yonge & Dundas329 Yonge St
