At the entrance of Matsqui Trail, a teal-blue, high-top minivan is serving up the best Cubano of your life. Aimerance Merveille Ngalula opened up her mobile food truck, Veille Café, on August 26.
The idea for Veille Café was born in 2019, when Ngalula was still living in Camrose, Alberta, learning about the science behind making the perfect espresso-based drink while working in a small coffee shop. In the wake of the pandemic, Ngalula decided she needed a change from her Albertan surroundings, so she moved out west to B.C. She was delightfully surprised when she experienced the readiness people in Abbotsford have in embracing local entrepreneurship.
After getting to meet other young business owners, such as the owners of Oldhand and Banter, Ngalula was inspired to open up a mobile coffee shop in Abbotsford. She snatched up a 1994 Ford Aerostar from Facebook Marketplace in October 2020 and began building it out. Ngalula was able to do all the woodwork herself, as she learned carpentry skills from helping her dad flip houses as a teenager. However, she still needed significantly more money to hire a welder to make the pop-top, an electrician to do all the wiring, and a plumber to install running water.
Ngalula started a Kickstarter campaign to raise these funds and gauge the level of interest there was for this type of café here in Abbotsford. With the help of an entire community, she was able to raise over $10,000 within 30 days. Other small businesses like Oldhand, Common Good, and Old Crow gave free coffee and other offers to people who pledged for Veille Café.
Despite her ability to be mobile, Veille Café will be based primarily at Matsqui Trail. That is due to Veille Café’s motto and mission to “build relational bridges through quality coffee and quality eats.” She has made this the mission of her business because building relational bridges has been the story of her life. Ngalula was born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and as a kid she moved to Uganda where she stood out as a foreigner and got to make friends with all different kinds of people. Then, she moved to Canada when she was a teenager, where she ended up being adopted by a white family and really wrestled with her African roots.
“I’ve lived my life in a way that connecting with people was never not an option. I had to learn to fit in all the different areas that life took me in,” Ngalula said. “Racially speaking, there are elements within the Black community that I don’t quite fit in. Also, due to my white upbringing and white family, there are things that I enjoy that don’t necessarily fit within the Black culture as I know it … The Black community doesn’t quite get why white people do certain things, and being part of the white community, despite being Black, I get to understand those different elements, and I get to have a neat understanding and perspective of blindspots people may not often see. That’s why building relational bridges is a motto for Veille Café, because I live that life.”
“I think it’s so neat being a Black person who makes coffee because I don’t know too many others. At least not too many who do it this way, in a way that invites your hipster clients but also gives Black people permission to enter that space. I remember when I first started leaning into the fact that I enjoyed the coffee culture and specialty coffee, but I didn’t really see myself in those scenes. It even took a lot to start loving it publicly because I didn’t want to be called ‘white washed.’ I had to give myself permission to publicly love coffee in the way that it exists in the Western society.”
Veille Café serves Road Coffee, a female-owned company based in Saskatoon. She chose this supplier because of their transparent relationship with the farmers who grow their beans. This is another part of the relational aspect of Veille Café: every cup of coffee you buy directly supports the livelihood of a farmer somewhere like Laos, where this month’s blend is from. Her drip coffee “on tap” is continually rotating, right now the featured drip is from Smoking Gun coffee, with beans harvested from Rwanda. Most of her baked goods come from Oldhand, her syrups she gets homemade from Common Good, and she will also be partnering with Polly Fox to supply vegan, gluten-free products.
“I don’t want to give into the culture of fast. It’s not a fast-food coffee place. When there is someone here, I want to give the space to have meaningful interactions with each person that’s ordering and who wants to talk, regardless of how long the line is. It’s been neat to see people come here with the grace and the patience to wait as long as they need to wait, because when it’s their turn, they are getting the same kind of attention.”
Check out Veille Café’s current hours of operation on their Instagram page, stop by Matsqui Trail to say hi to Aimerance, and enjoy the best coffee you’ve ever drank from a minivan.
Images: Maxwell Chadwick, Rachel Barkman, and Andrea Sadowski
Andrea Sadowski is working towards her BA in Global Development Studies, with a minor in anthropology and Mennonite studies. When she's not sitting in front of her computer, Andrea enjoys climbing mountains, sleeping outside, cooking delicious plant-based food, talking to animals, and dismantling the patriarchy.
