Cedar Café @ MOA
Third summer running for this Indigenous owned coffee stop
Mckenzie Robinson was walking by MOA once day and saw the empty coffee setup. This place needs a coffee shop he thought. ‘Who do I ask?’ He was directed to Moya Waters, then associate director of MOA. That led to the creation of the Cedar Café which opened July 2024 shortly after the museum’s reopening following the major seismic retrofitting.
In August 2021 MOA announced the permanent closure of the cafe. The cafe space, at the end of the ramp east of the main entrance, had for many years been a lunch space for school groups and catering centre for museum events.
Susan Rowley, MOA Director, outlined the history of the cafe for me. Between 2007 and 2010, MOA underwent a major rebuild of the research facilities. A new cafe was part of the rebuild. UBC Food Services was invited in to operate a coffee counter in the rebuilt cafe space. An independent contractor, familiar with operating other food outlets on the UBC campus (Loafe & Koerner’s Pub) took over in August of 2015. This lasted until the 2020 pandemic shutdown. Then, in 2021 MOA announced the permanent closure of the cafe. And there things sat until Mckenzie walked by.
Mckenzie Robinson and Cedar Café
I sat down over coffee and bannock with Mckenzie Monday June 22, 2026. Mckenzie is Indigenous with his roots in Timiskaming First Nation. We talked about what led him into running a coffeeshop. Along the way I learned about how his family is involved with him. One brother prepped his cafe tables. His mother did art work for his business. Another brother helps him with the coffee roasting. Its a family affair.
Mckenzie is part of the Canadian Reserves. He joined the Seaforth Highlanders in 2007.
That’s an infantry reserve unit. I deployed, about 2 and a half years after I got in, deployed to Afghanistan for about 7 months. I switched units just recently to the 6th Intelligence. I have recently changed units and it’s a bit more laid back than an infantry position which is a lot more eventful.
It was his military experience that brought him to UBC as operations coordinator in the Institution for Veterans Education and Transition. It was while on campus he came across the empty MOA cafe.
I asked Mckenzie about what was involved in setting up the coffee shop.
Before I started, I went and interviewed the previous owner. He has a couple locations now that have little things different, but I could see how he ran things here. He’s like, ‘you’re gonna be pulling your hair out. I don’t got any hair left.’ No, but what I tried to do is develop like little systems and things. We bake some of our stuff, but because we don’t have a full kitchen we bring in some other stuff.
Setting up the cafe included lining up health and safety permits. Mckenzie coordinated with MoA on timing and was able to be open within a week of MoA’s reopening in the summer of 2024.
When MOA reopened, we opened like pretty much a week after they did that. I had about a month to get all this stuff for the cafe, to set up all the permits. It was a month to do that, but it all came through.
I asked Mckenzie about the cost of setting things up.
I kind of like bootstrapped a lot of the stuff and I know how to fix stuff. My background was in electronic technology. I was able to get an espresso machine from another local coffee company and the owner helped set it up.
Mckenzie pointed to the table we were sitting at. “My brother Dave fixed these up” he explained.
I asked Mckenzie if I was correct that he has a coffee roasting business as well.
Yeah, so Trek Coffee is what supplies the café and actually owns it. It’s doing business as, so DBA, right? But Trek Coffee is the overall contract with the museum. We have a roaster in my house.
We do business to business, so we supply another company that goes around to a bunch of businesses, so wholesale. It’s called Thirst First. So they take 1.3-pound bags from us, and we do like 50, 60 a month, and then they spread it around to their own bean-to-cup machines. So that kind of keeps us rolling.
Any thoughts on seeing if you can scale up? I asked.
We definitely want to, but the machine that we have right now is just good enough to do a small wholesale account. And then the café. And my little brother is actually the one that roasts it right now.
The cafe employs nine people on a rotating basis. Mckenzie runs the scheduling, banking, and logistics for the cafe. He also runs his coffee roasting business and has a part time job with a helicopter company.
Mckenzie and crew work hard to make the Cedar Café a great place to have coffee and spend time with friends and colleagues.
For the curious, the bannock was great. :)
