This summer’s hot hospitality concept in Vancouver is the all-day cocktail-café: the kind of place where you can have a breakfast meeting, cram in some laptop time, then transition to cocktails with friends—and maybe pick up a gift on your way home. 

Calling itself a “dual bar,” Ellipsis recently opened in the glass-front, wedge-shaped space in the courtyard of the landmark Waterfall Building. “It’s a café, it’s a bar,” says owner Ming Yang. The launch cocktail menu, by local bar star Zoe Bates, includes café-friendly sips like Ça Va, made with croissant-infused gin with a mini-pastry on the side.

The Nemesis coffee team opened BamBam in downtown Vancouver this spring, serving a bangin’ lineup of fried chicken, donuts, coffee and playful foodie-fashioned cocktails, like an Apple Pie & Rye. For anyone who thrives on caffeinated or cocktail-fuelled shopping, there’s a significant retail space at BamBam, which includes its own bespoke streetwear line.

Coming soon to the Vancouver all-day-cocktail-café-boutique scene, Sylva the Plant Bar sprouts from the fertile mind of award-winning—and green-thumbed—bartender Lacey Roberts. The former Published on Main lead bartender plans to pair the selection and expertise of a hip flower shop/plant nursery, along with café and bar tipples and nibbles, for an opening late this summer.