Dunbar News

Dunbarites Eat Up Bakery’s Latin Pastries

By Carol Volkart

When Daniel Muñoz and his partner Cosette Bote got the keys to 4321 Dunbar Street last August, they admit they had concerns.

How would a Latin-inspired bakery café headed by an adventurous young pastry chef do in quiet old Dunbar? Especially on a shoestring budget in tough economic times?

“We didn’t know what the reaction would be,” says Venezuelan-born Muñoz, who trained at George Brown College in Toronto, and since 2015 has been honing his resume at some of Vancouver’s most inventive food outlets, including Hawksworth restaurant and Beta 5 chocolates and pastries.

“We were definitely very, very worried.”

Now, two months after opening Toña Bakery & Café, Muñoz, 31, and Bote, a 28-year-old former barista at Beaucoup, are starting to breathe easier.

“We have definitely been very surprised,” says Muñoz. “Lots of people have said how happy they are that we’re here.”

Bote, who grew up in south Vancouver, but didn’t know Dunbar well until the café project, says her front-of-house and barista work gives her a first-hand look at how customers are reacting. “From one to two weeks in, we were starting to get regulars,” she says. “We feel very welcome in this community.”

Muñoz is especially pleased with the locals’ openness to his unfamiliar offerings. At first, he baked a dozen blueberry muffins a day, thinking they’d be an approachable item for those checking out his café. But given the choice of a muffin, a concha, a cachito, or a black sesame and orange Kouign Amann, his customers overwhelmingly went for the latter pastries. Muñoz gave the muffins a good try, but when he ended up tossing 10 out of every dozen, he ditched them.

“People have been open to trying almost anything Daniel puts out,” says Bote, whose job includes some pastry-explaining. But some old familiars – especially the versions done by a top-notch pastry chef – remain popular, so pain au chocolate, almond croissants, pecan sticky buns, and even chocolate chip cookies keep their spots in Tona’s display case.

The pastries are only one aspect of what makes Toña different from your standard bakery café.

Walk in the door, and you’ll feel it immediately. The tangerine ceiling and electric blue accents against an otherwise neutral palette say warmth and welcome. To your right is something you’ve likely never seen before – a two-tiered bench, specially commissioned for the café, with blue cushions sprinkled top and bottom. Bote, an early-childhood educator before her café days, has loved watching kids drawn automatically to the top level, while their parents gravitate to the lower. “We know it’s not for everybody,’ she says, “but we wanted it to be very different.”

To your left, instead of the predictable bar with stools in the bay window, there’s a small orange-topped table and chairs, where someone is reading – yes, a book! And at the long communal table to the back of the room, there’s a constant shifting of groups of twos and threes chatting over coffee and pastries, then making way for the next group. With its casual flexibility, bright accents and modern furnishings, the tiny cafe has the feel of a carefully curated living room.

“We wanted an inviting space with warmth and soul,” says Bote. “A lot of cafes are very minimalist. We wanted the opposite, but not too much. We wanted people to feel welcome and to want to stay awhile, to create a space that also feels like our home.”

It also reflects Muñoz’s view that relationships with customers should be human connections, not just transactions. “This is a very, very personal project,” he says of the cafe. “It does feel like we are welcoming you into our home.”

He’s sad about what he sees as the general disappearance of customer service, where the prevailing attitude is, “What do you want? Get out!” He contrasts that with the attitude toward guests in Venezuela, where “if someone is coming to visit you, you go above and beyond to make sure they feel comfortable and welcome and cared for.”

And so, if customers are lingering a little beyond the café’s current 4 p.m. closing time (it may change later), Bote may well cut them some slack. And if customers want an explanation – or even a sample – of an unfamiliar pastry, she’s happy to oblige. To provide a little break for parents at the café, there’s even a small stack of interactive kids’ books for them to enjoy with their kids.

The customer-care attitude extends to the bakery display. Instead of the usual bursting cornucopia of goodies that occupy most bakery counters, Toña’s are displayed singly, like objects of art with name tags, in a vertical glass case. Yes, it’s more practical in a tiny space, but it also provides a good view of what’s available, and when languages are unfamiliar, makes it easy to ask for explanations. There’s beauty in abundance, says Muñoz, but it can also feel overwhelming. When it comes to his café, anyway, “I don’t like overwhelming people.”

Along with the welcome from customers, Muñoz and Bote have enjoyed getting to know their business neighbours and becoming part of the Dunbar community. They’re already contributing to it: A bag of Toña’s chocolates, caramels and kinakos was one of the prizes in the Dunbar Community Patrol’s Feb. 13 annual thank-you night to volunteers.

Muñoz and Bote have been delighted to learn about the history of their premises, which opened as a bakery in 1926 and has been a bakery in Dunbar for nearly 100 years.

Longtime residents will remember it as the Ideal Bakery, operated by Mabel Pickett for more than 50 years. Then came Butter Baked Goods in 2007, followed by Sweet Something, which opened in 2017 and closed in the summer of 2024, making room for Toña, which opened the second week of December.

But the strain of starting a new business still shows on Muñoz’s and Bote’s faces. Getting the keys to 4321 Dunbar last August was the beginning of months of exhausting 14-hour days, mostly without a break. It was a family project from the start; Muñoz’s parents, sister and others worked with him and Bote to make it happen. Between them, they did all the renovations themselves, including retiling the floor, building the new furniture, and dealing with slanted floors and uneven walls. Friends and family continue to pitch in to keep the café humming, contributing labour both paid and unpaid.

As for the future, Muñoz and Bote hope Toña will become a habit for people living and working in Dunbar. Their 8 a.m. opening is aimed at people wanting a good coffee on their way to work or school, and they hope people will drop by again later in the day for a snack or lunch.

Muñoz plans to diversify his offerings with bread and possibly cured meats, so people can drop by for a loaf on the way home from work. On the weekends, Muñoz does more adventurous baking, with the goal of  making Toña a “destination” bakery that draws people from all over the city.

There will be house-made ice cream in summer, and for special occasions, like Valentine’s Day and Easter, Munoz will bring his creative talents to the fore with inventive chocolate offerings.

I got a sample of that during my visit this week, when Muñoz displayed a tray of shining pink, green and chocolate heart-shaped Valentine’s Day chocolates with playful names and exotic ingredients. There were My Main Squeeze, Apple of My Eye, Love Bombing and Ispahan, the big piece de resistance with “lychee and rose jelly, rose almond marzipan, rosemary milk chocolate ganache and raspberry inspiration chocolate.” The chocolates were being packaged in ribbon-tied transparent boxes, ready to give recipients a tastebud workout on Feb. 14.

But the longer-term future is as unknown to Muñoz as to most people in these uncertain times.

His welcome in Dunbar means he’d like to stay here, but he has a three-year lease with a potential three-year extension with a demolition clause. The 100-year-old building he’s in made it possible to start the business, but it also means demolition is coming. And once the building is replaced with an expensive new development, the rent will be too high for a small business like Toña. “Sadly, these [new] buildings are not small-business friendly,” says Muñoz.

He likes the “romance” of interesting streets full of unique small businesses, but he sees them vanishing all across the city. In the future, he says, he expects only stores that are part of chains will be able to afford to stay. “It’s sad to go to other parts of town and they all look the same.”

In the meantime, he’s fulfilling his longtime dream of owning his own brick-and-mortar bakery. “I have never worked so hard for so little money, but this was my dream and goal for 15 years,” he says. “I’m living the dream already.”

“It’s been nerve-racking, from the highest highs to the lowest lows. It’s the scariest thing I have ever done, but insanely rewarding.”