A place to start again

In the spring of 2023, a small pop-up opened on Huron Street, behind Robarts Library at the University of Toronto. Some of the first customers through the door had been buying drinks from a coffee truck that stopped near that corner three years earlier. The truck had been gone since 2020. They remembered it anyway.

The person behind the counter was Evan Park. He is the founder of 18feet, and he is also the person who publishes this journal. That is worth saying up front. We asked him anyway, because the story explains why Masigo exists.

What he wanted to introduce

Evan came to Canada to start a business, with one belief: the most Korean things can travel. The idea he landed on was fruit Cheong, the Korean fruit syrup made by preserving fruit in sugar.

At first he made it himself and sold it to people he knew. When he wanted to reach more people, he started pairing cheong with the drinks Canadians already drank every day: coffee, tea, sparkling water. There was no capital, so there were not many ways to find customers. A coffee truck was one of them. 18feet opened in 2019.

The truck was eighteen feet long. That is the whole name. He chose it so the business would always carry the measurement of the room it started in, and the work it took to fill it: one person, a small counter, a syrup nobody here had tasted yet. Whatever 18feet grew into, the name would keep saying how small the start was.

Six months, twice

About six months in, COVID shut the truck down. His business partner decided to go back to Korea. Evan stayed.

"If I ever got the chance, I wanted to do it again," he told us. The plan, such as it was, was to save enough money to open a single proper store. There was no date on it. The wanting stayed.

The chance came in 2023. Someone he knew had a small empty space in their building on Huron Street and asked if he wanted to try. It was close to where the truck used to park. 18feet reopened as a pop-up, and the old customers came back. Business was good.

Six months later, the building was slated for redevelopment and he was asked to clear the space. A place that had just started greeting customers again had to be packed up a second time.

Gerrard

The next address was Gerrard Street. Evan opened the first permanent 18feet with what he had saved and what he could borrow. It was the store he had pictured while closing the truck, three years and two shutdowns earlier.

The menu kept moving. After cheong, he spent a long time on matcha, working toward a house matcha syrup and pairing matcha with cheong. Rooms changed and drinks were added, but the syrup he first wanted to introduce is still on the bar.

There are now four 18feet locations.

The next room

Ask Evan what 18feet should become and the answer is a café that is classic and modern at the same time, a place you can walk into out of habit and still find something new to drink. He wants to grow it into a next-generation café franchise.

He thinks about who would run those rooms. Couples who have just arrived in Canada and are settling in, working hard, wanting something of their own. He wants the brand to be a real chance for them to run their own store.

"Living in Canada with nothing is really hard," he said. The sentence was short. The truck, the pop-up, the saved money and the borrowed money were all behind it.

Running four stores turned his attention to other café owners. He wanted to build something useful to the people doing the same work. That is where Masigo, the café ordering platform, came from, and this journal with it.

Through 18feet, he wants to create the chance for someone to start their own store. Through Masigo, he wants to be useful to the people already running one.

He once hoped to open a single store of his own. Now he thinks about the room for other people to start, and to start again. The name on the door still measures the truck.

Written by the Masigo team from Evan Park's answers to our questions. Evan is the founder of 18feet and Masigo.