This Visionary Spot Will Be the Largest Cafe in Vancouver
This is going to be the biggest cafe in Vancouver. Over 5,000 square feet and with up to 100 seats, plus a full wraparound patio, cafe connoisseur and restaurateur, Bridgette Hyun, is creating more than just a statement. When C Market Coffee opens its new flagship on Main Street later this year it might just change the landscape of the city’s coffee culture.
Bridgette, the CEO and founder of C Market Coffee, is not new to making strategic moves. Since opening her first location in Coquitlam in 2017, she has grown the brand to four cafes, one of which houses a coffee roastery. Along the way, she has shaped a business model that merges specialty coffee with a fully developed food program, something that has yielded strong results over the past eight years.
C Market Coffee began as a collaboration between Bridgette and Chef Rumi Lee and in addition to creating an immersive cafe experience they’ve mastered the art of narrative weaving — where ideas turn into real life touchpoints. C Market Coffee, for example, takes its name from the global “C Market”: the exchange where Arabica coffee is traded as a commodity. Bridgette and Rumi, reimagined this concept for today’s market: not just as a place to buy and sell, but as a space where quality, people, and purpose intersect. In a country where most cafes offer light snacks alongside coffee, the duo asked a simple but powerful question: What if you could enjoy truly great coffee and a thoughtfully prepared meal, all under one roof?
To compel a positive answer to that question Bridgette and Rumi knew they needed to source quality ingredients for both the coffee and food. Bridgette runs C Market with clear systems, quality control, and an eye on long-term positioning. Her background as a Q grader gives her a technical edge when it comes to coffee quality, and her experience sourcing and roasting beans means she controls the product from origin to cup. To this effect C Market has developed its own roastery to provide their cafes with bona fide quality coffee.
The culinary program that Rumi started at C Market is equally robust. “We have a deeper food menu compared to any other cafes,” Bridgette says. That means bulgogi bowls, Korean fried chicken bowls, gourmet sandwiches, and even jet-black squid ink buns, all produced in-house. “We have an amazing team that creates all the coffee, of course,” says Bridgette, “and then make sauce, bread all from from scratch.”
Bridgette and Rumi quickly found the necessary tools for success and those have been present since the start, buffeting the C Market brand. But they endured a big loss when Rumi Lee passed at the early age of 41 years old. While this kind of tragedy might halt some businesses in their tracks, Bridgette was able to channel the passion and vision they shared for C Market into keeping one foot in front of the other. While she is no longer able to witness the brand’s continued expansion Rumi’s influence remains integral to the business. “All of her culinary inspiration is there… we still use her sauces,” shares Bridgette, emotionally.
The new location is the fourth in the C Market story. It also marks a bold foray out of the Tri-Cities area and into the vibrant corridors of Vancouver. The choice of Main Street and East 36th Avenue is both a lifestyle and business decision. The area is growing fast, with residential and commercial developments on the way. The new C Market will be one of the only cafes on the strip to offer on-site parking, both underground and at street level.
The buildout is ambitious: large indoor seating, extensive patio space, and a menu that goes beyond the existing locations. Not content with simply creating Vancouver’s biggest cafe, Bridgette has innovative offerings that she expects to keep the cafe bustling. When asked if there was a highlight she could let us in on, she grinned. “We’re going to bring in latte and coffee flights,” she confides with a smile.
But not just that C Market Main Street might become even more known for their desert omakase - where the team carefully pairs pastries and desserts with coffees. Bridgette teases that this particular menu will take C Market into new waters, onboarding local vendors to help make it a community endeavor, “we love collaboration, so we're looking forward to collaborating with lots of a Vancouver artisans and other small business owners,” says Bridgette.
There’s even a liquor license, meaning you could feasibly start your morning with a flat white and end your evening with a cocktail in the same seat.
Bridgette frames these offerings as part of an “all-inclusive” cafe concept in the way the space accommodates a full range of preferences and occasions. And it buoys C Market’s position as an “affordable luxury.”
C Market has it’s roots in Korean coffee culture. After all, that’s where Bridgette was born. As she’s built C Market’s growing collection of impressive cafes she continues to keep a close watch on the cafe trends emerging back home. Korea’s coffee scene is notoriously fast-moving and competitive, with concepts evolving every year. “We’ve got to be creative of our own too,” she says, which explains some of the more playful menu developments. A melon coffee is on the way, alongside black salt cream coffee, tiramisu coffee, and seasonal experiments that sound like they come from a chef’s test kitchen as much as a coffee bar.
This balance between trend adoption and originality is part of what makes C Market Coffee worth watching.
Bridgette and her team have a clear goal: the team envisions a national brand representing upscale cafe culture in Canada. But Bridgette is careful about how growth happens. Expansion is measured, ensuring that quality, consistency, and guest connection remain intact. The Main Street project, particularly with it’s size, is a risk, but a calculated one.
As more locations open, it’s important to Bridgette and the C Market culture to protect the small moments; remembering a regular’s order, creating seasonal dishes that surprise without alienating, and maintaining a standard that makes each visit feel intentional. It’s a balance of scale and intimacy that when executed correctly can be an iconic feat in the industry.
The target date for the Main Street flagship is mid-December. The plan is to open daily at 7 a.m., with Bridgette pushing to make this the first C Market to operate 365 days a year.
When asked what she hopes this new location will become, she doesn’t hesitate: “I hope… to open the community hub for Vancouver.” Given the ambition, the detail, and the thought going into the project, it’s fair ti say that doesn’t sound like wishful thinking.
The cafe industry thrives on both consistency and novelty. Bridgette seems intent on delivering both, and doing so at a scale that will be hard to miss. For a city that prides itself on coffee culture, and with a menu of innovative options to try, this one will be worth making time for.
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