Frustrated by the lack of local eateries that both welcome parents with small children and offer healthy food options, moms Davina Cheung-Brown and Tera Goldblatt have opened Playful Grounds to promote a more sophisticated kind of family outing.
Sippy cups don’t exactly scream sophistication, but Davina Cheung-Brown and Tera Goldblatt are hoping to create a place where parents and caregivers can take their kids, have a coffee and not sacrifice feeling like a grown-up. Opening tomorrow (Jan. 31), Playful Grounds is their new café at 605 College (near Clinton) with a kid-friendly menu and play area. It may have booster seats and children’s books, but the coffee shop doesn’t just cater to the little ones—the black leather seating and art-clad walls have a bit more in common with other Little Italy cafes than a McDonald’s kid zone.
We talked Americanos and stroller parking with Cheung-Brown and Goldblatt.
Do you want to start off by telling me how the whole idea for this café came about?
Cheung-Brown: I moved here about two years ago from Vancouver and in Vancouver there are a few restaurants with little play areas that are much more baby-friendly. I live in Mississauga and my daughter goes to school downtown. Last winter, I’d drop her off and be trekking through the rain and snow with my stroller and [my son] Avon and I needed somewhere to go. There’s nowhere to go that doesn’t have a step, or there’s no change table in the bathroom, or [servers would] see me with a kid and not be very inviting. I told a mutual friend of ours—Becky, who’s the owner of The Roxton—that I need to open a baby-friendly café. And she said, “Talk to Tera. She’s been saying it forever.” Before Christmas of last year, we brainstormed. And after that, it’s just kind of snowballed.
Goldblatt: I thought I’d be through with wanting to go to nice places by the time I had a kid. But I realized that’s not the case at all. I’ve always lived in this area and I still want to be able to go to all these places, but you don’t stand a chance of getting a stroller into most of them. It took me a long time to find the kiddie-friendly places that I go to. And I’m so glad I found them, because I need to meet other moms, but it seems like everywhere we go, it’s for the kids. There’s nowhere to go that’s still for us, but has everything we need for them.
What other kid-friendly restaurants or cafes do you go to?
Goldblatt: There’s really only one in the east end: the Lil’ bean n’ green [in Leslieville]. People don’t really think of College Street as a kiddie area, but it is. There are a lot of families here.
Is that why you chose to open Playful Grounds in this location?
Goldblatt: Yeah, we met at the drop-in centre on Clinton through our mutual friend. If you walked around here on a Thursday or Friday night, you’d never realize how many families there are. But hit the streets around 10 a.m. and it’s just strollers as far as the eye can see. And nobody has anywhere to go that isn’t a drop-in centre. We don’t want to be a drop-in centre. We made that decision early on. Are we a play area with a café or are we a café with a play area? And we decided: We are a café with a play area. We love the drop-in centres, but they’re for the kids. That’s why we have more adult things here, like the décor. We didn’t want to kiddify it—we wanted to keep it fairly neutral so if we want to do some nighttime things, like an art opening or book launch or evening parties, we can.
What other neighbourhoods did you look at?
Goldblatt: We never really ventured very far from here. We looked at a place at Shaw and College, a few places that were on Dundas and even a bit west of Dufferin. Basically, we wanted to be in between Dufferin Grove, Trinity Bellwoods and close enough to Roncesvalles. But if we hadn’t been able to find something here, we might have gone to Roncesvalles because that’s where Playful Grounds 2 will be. And then Playful Grounds 3 will be in Bloor West Village, and Playful Grounds 4 will be at Yonge and Eglinton. We’re going to take over the world.
You’re hoping to expand, then?
Goldblatt: Oh yeah, because wherever there are families, there’s a need for it. If you look at the trends, it’s mummy-baby yoga and mummy-baby everything you can think of—except for restaurants. Restaurants are either adult or Boston Pizza and McDonald’s. It just comes back to providing something that’s for us and that’s a bit more healthy. There’s no deep fryer here and it’s not a kid’s menu of hot dogs, pizza and chicken fingers. It’s real food: veggie platters, milk steamers, freshly squeezed juice. Eventually, we’ll expand the menu and make fruit smoothies and things like that.
What are some of the challenges of finding kid-friendly spaces in the city?
Goldblatt: Speaking from experience, you just sort of settle. You can go to Starbucks and time it when your kid’s napping so you can sit down and have a coffee or have something to eat. Then your kid starts screaming and you frantically jump up and grab your kid and gather all your things and get out the door as soon as possible because you don’t want your child to disturb anybody. And people look at you like they’ve found you under a rock. Like, “Why are you in here?”
Cheung-Brown: There are areas in Toronto that are very kid-friendly. But it’s hard to get onto the streetcar and things like that. In some parts of the city, there are a lot of little steps everywhere. And most places downtown, the bathrooms are all downstairs.
Yeah, they’re always down a treacherous staircase.
Goldblatt: We were really lucky to find the place because the bathrooms were already on the ground floor. So it hasn’t taken much for us to convert it into a full family bathroom. We just had to add a couple of things.
In terms of the set up of the café, you’ll be able to fit strollers down the centre aisle, there’ll be stroller parking in the front and there’s an unsupervised play area. What else?
Cheung-Brown: We try and think of little things. When my son got in here, he kept bonking his head on the corners of the table. So we went to IKEA and bought the corners to put on the tables. And, in the family bathroom, we put a chalkboard in the back so if you have two kids, one is on the change table, the other’s preoccupied with the chalkboard.
Goldblatt: And we’ll have all the high chairs and booster seats that can fit in the place. And on the menu, most things will come in a small size. We’ve got three paninis on the menu for adults, but we have this dinosaur cut-out that will go into the organic bread for the grilled cheese for the kids. And we’re going for healthy stuff like dips and veggie platters that will also come in two sizes. We’re trying to do organic where we can. There are also baked goods like a chocolate zucchini muffin that’s about 40 per cent zucchini. My child inhaled it the other day because he thought it was a cupcake.
Cheung-Brown: We’re getting baked goods from a lot of different areas. Eventually, we hope to do a lot more of our own stuff. But right now, it’s all about the coffee.
Goldblatt: We’ll have coffee from Alternative Grounds and tea from Herbal Infusions. Plus alcohol.
Seriously?
Goldblatt: We bought all the alcohol that goes well in a coffee: Kahlua, Bailey’s, that kind of thing. Plus wine and beer.
Cheung-Brown: We have a lot of friends that don’t have kids, but it’s hard to meet up with them and go to a restaurant when you’re constantly worrying that the children will make noise. But this is an environment where you can invite your friends and they’ll feel comfortable and have a glass of wine on a Sunday afternoon if that’s what they want.
It’s a bit different than I expected. I thought it would be more of a kid-based place.
Goldblatt: There are enough places out there that are for the kids—every place we go is for them. It’s nice to know that there’s a place that parents or grandparents or nannies can go that’s for them. We’re just providing all things that parents need to get the kids out of their hair so that they can enjoy themselves.
Cheung-Brown: We’re kind of a medium between the kid-places and the more adult places where we can just sit down and enjoy a cup of coffee.
Goldblatt: Any parent will know how hard it is to get to your coffee before it’s stone cold. And you’re always eating your food cold and always eating it with one hand. Look how long [Davina’s daughter has been] occupied at that train table. It gives you enough time to enjoy your drink, be a person and recharge.
Playful Grounds (605 College) is open Mondays to Fridays from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
