On a quiet residential street in the east end, there’s an average, albeit slightly unkempt, detached Edwardian home, the sort you’d imagine belonging to a kindly retired couple who bought in the 1980s, or perhaps a young family just entering the real estate market thanks to a heap of inheritance cash. The only clue that this house may contain something unexpected is a small sticker on the front door that reads “Café Club.” Inside, owner A. J. Shoihet has created a community hangout space and art gallery he’s dubbed Café Club TO—an alternate universe bedecked in paintings, kitsch and found detritus—and you’re invited.
For $9 a day, anyone can head to Shoihet’s living room to co-work, hang out on the couch, enjoy a coffee or perhaps even strike a downward dog on the yoga mat he’s placed in the middle of the floor. After more than a decade spent working remotely from coffee shops, the 32-year-old real estate developer found himself disillusioned by the laptop-in-a-café experience, finding it ironic that so many people leave their homes to work in public places yet rarely end up speaking to anyone.
He longed for a friendlier option, where he could meet people and linger for as long as he liked without feeling like a financial burden. After mulling it over for several years, he decided to make it happen in his own home. He purchased a used Rocket espresso machine for $3,000 and began furnishing the space with bargains from the Habitat for Humanity ReStore and a tabletop fished out of the garbage of a nearby Pizza Nova. Related: “I can’t serve coffee without violating zoning laws”—This Little Italy corner store is caught between NIMBY complaints and archaic bylaws
In the summer of 2023, Shoihet tacked up a sign on his lawn, hoping to attract neighbours to come and visit. Instead, he got a call from the city inquiring about whether he was running a commercial café out of his house. No, he insisted, he was just inviting friends over to his living room. He took down the sign and turned to social media, where he began making Instagram Reels to attract would-be guests. For the first few weeks, the only person to take him up on it was his dad.
After several weeks of trying to give away free day passes, he began charging $9 for limitless cappuccinos—while building a social media audience through Instagram and Tiktok—and people started to arrive from all over the city to co-work out of the space. (After Shoihet found that some guests were taking advantage of the limitless coffee, the $9 fee now includes one coffee. A VIP day pass, which includes limitless coffee, is $14.)
The space bears little resemblance to the highly curated interiors of professional co-working spaces like WeWork, Surf Office, Regus or East Room. Shoihet’s living room has a vaguely intestinal-looking mass of painted foam hanging from the ceiling above the fireplace, multiple squash rackets affixed to the wall (Shoihet used to play professionally), an ATM sign on the mantle, and a jumble of artwork from local artists like Emmanuel Chukwu, Mikey William Cheung, and Livia Mezini on the walls.
The hallway entrance, painted black and lined with portraits of busty aliens, serves as an “intergalactic phone booth” where guests can take business calls. The idea is to inspire creativity by providing a highly stimulating environment where every corner provokes a new question.
Since opening, Shoihet has used the space to host an acquaintance’s 30th birthday party in his backyard, a rave and several art openings. “I had a girl come in talking about how dating in Toronto is so bad,” he says, which gave him the idea to host a blind-dating night. “I filled the place up with people looking to meet other people, and it was a really nice evening. People from that event are still coming by.”
But is it legal? Shoihet maintains that he doesn’t serve food, so he shouldn’t be subject to city-required health and safety inspections. The coffee he serves is no different from the coffee a friend would make for you, he claims. Then what about the fee? “You’re supporting the cost associated with sharing space,” he says, likening it to sending a friend an e-transfer for your portion of a restaurant bill. In a sense, he claims, the $9 could be considered a gift. Visitors are allowed to bring their own food—provided it adheres to Shoihet’s own vegan diet. “At the core, this is my house and I’m inviting you over for coffee,” he says.
Shoihet sees his ad hoc café as a way of fighting the loneliness epidemic, and he dreams of café clubs opening up all over the city. “Homes are for sharing,” he says. “We have better times when we have our friends and family over.” He’s so passionate about the idea that he’s currently in the process of building an app where others can follow in his footsteps by opening their living rooms to caffeine-seeking strangers.
He calls it a way of democratizing space and hopes that it will catch on—but not necessarily for the most positive reasons. “Daytime sharing is an unexplored avenue for people to all of a sudden be able to afford their rent or their bills,” he says, pointing out the similarities of the practice to Airbnb before it was taken over by real estate speculators: a way for people to earn extra cash by letting strangers into their personal spaces.
Ironically, Shoihet got his start in real estate by renting luxury condos and leasing them out as Airbnbs for a profit. He sees café clubs as a way of “reducing inefficiency” and making more spaces available to everyone—though the for-profit element seems to clash with his desire to foster genuine community.
While Café Club has brought great joy into Shoihet’s life, he admits that not everyone is as jazzed by the concept as he is. “I get TikTok comments saying, ‘I wouldn’t want my next-door neighbour doing that,’” he says. The worst experience was when Café Club became the subject of a rather lively debate on daytime talk show The Social, in which a fired-up Andrea Bain found the idea of going to a stranger’s house sketchy and suggested he might be a serial killer. (On the other hand, co-host Cynthia Loyst loved the idea and applauded him for being a “disruptor.”) While Shoihet wishes the show had given him the opportunity to defend himself on air, he says the strong reaction proves his point: if it was a bad idea, he figures, no one would be paying attention.
If nothing else, it’s worked for him. Shoihet says it’s hard to articulate just how much Café Club has made a difference in his own social life. Before, the extent of his friend network consisted of three people he kept in touch with from high school. “Now, everyone who comes in here is my friend,” he says. He estimates that over 100 people have visited the space, with anywhere from three to fifteen people stopping by per week. Among his new friends are artists Nicholas Ridiculous, whose custom Café Club rug hangs on the wall, and Thomas Triebe-Pay, who is responsible for the aforementioned intestine foam.
Opening your home up to strangers, however, does come with some annoyances. “Your home is a private space, so you have to be able to set boundaries,” he says. One visitor in particular was loud and disruptive while others were trying to concentrate, so Shoihet had to tell him to keep it down. But, for the most part, everyone who comes tends to be respectful. “Most people are in tune to the fact they’re in someone’s home, and they know they’re a guest.”
Previously open from Wednesday to Sunday, Café Club is now open by appointment only. “I’m transitioning away from trying to make this a bumping co-working space and instead trying to get this app built so that other people can do similar things out there,” he says. Two former visitors have already replicated the idea in their own homes and are eager to join the app: See U IRL in midtown and another in the west end. “I want people to think of their homes as something they can leverage to improve their life,” Shoihet says, “not just as some sort of private accessory that is not able to be shared.”
While he hasn’t been focused on making money through Café Club TO, he does view the app, which is currently self-funded, as a business opportunity, and he plans to charge users a fee for membership. “It’s important that the club has a membership aspect, because it means we all belong,” he says. Without any pressure from investors, he doesn’t have a launch date for the app, but he’s aiming for this fall.
Until then, anyone can head to Café Club TO’s website and book themselves an appointment. “I’m happy that I’ve created a space where a lot of people feel like they can have a good vibe and just be themselves,” says Shoihet.
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Isabel Slone is a fashion and culture journalist living in Toronto. She writes for Toronto Life, the New York Times, the Guardian, the Wall Street Journal, Architectural Digest and more. She has a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia Journalism School.