cafe #1: boxcar social

officially starting my toronto coffee blog with cafe #1: boxcar social!

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location: 499 Richmond St W, Toronto, ON M5V 0P4

what i got: karimikui AA washed pourover (kenya), with a salted chocolate chip cookie 🤪

price: $12.15 ($6.75 before tax for the pourover)

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the cafe is located inside of this place called waterworks food hall, which has a variety of multi-cultural food vendors. i've been to another boxcar social around college/spadina years ago, but i wasn't really into coffee back then.

vibe/ambience - 6.5/10

the vibe of waterworks is aightttt it's not your standard cafe vibe i feel, but it has its own little charm to it! it's giving corporate LOL however boxcar social itself feels very bar-like and modern -- which is cool but to me it's not really giving peaceful/relaxing/homey/warm. every cafe is going to give a different ambience for sure, but i'm the one grading here 🤷‍♂️ what can i say LOL

presentation - 8/10

they presented the coffee in the pour-over service tray style, which i love! however i feel like whenever cafes do this, it's not as much coffee LOL but that's cool

price - 8.5/10

they don't have a set price, so they list it as mp (market price). i had to ask what mp meant LOL 😅 $6.75 for a pourover isn't bad! i feel like some other cafes tend to price their pourovers in the $10+ range, so this was great :)

coffee quality - 8/10

the coffee was great! super clean, fresh and pure 😮‍💨 honestly idek what AA, washed, SL-2B and all that mean and idek if i can taste it LOOL but hey it was some good coffee!

i put it at an 8/10 because there wasn't anything craaazy with it, just some good quality kape 😛 but yeah hopefully my taste buds get more sophisticated so i can go more in-depth with how the coffee tastes and all that. idek what type of coffee i rly like 🤷‍♂️ but that's a journey i shall be taking with this series :)

final score - 7.7/10

i've thought long about how to weigh these criteria, and i've placed coffee quality as the highest weight at 45%! vibe is also important to me because i really want to relax, and the environment should be warm and inviting for me 😛 presentation and price aren't as important so i'm keeping them at 15% each.

coffee quality: 8.0 × 0.45 = 3.6
vibe:           6.5 × 0.25 = 1.625
presentation:   8.0 × 0.15 = 1.2
price:          8.5 × 0.15 = 1.275

final score: 7.7 / 10

hope you enjoyed! see you at the next cafe review :)

(ps. i'll try to set up some sort of newsletter system soon)