.png)
Listen to Desiree and Mya on why we are opening two wellness cafes, and why the holidays start at Connections
Desiree and Mya have been building La Maison Ralia together for years now, and in this episode they sit down and talk about what comes next. They opened an event space called Connections, they filled the hotel with rooms activated by Montreal artists, and they built a team and a vibe and a whole ecosystem of what regenerative hospitality can look like.
And then someone asked them the question that started all of this: but what about coffee?
Not just any coffee, but philosophy in every cup coffee, the kind that comes from somewhere and goes somewhere and carries the story of the people who cared about it the whole way.
Cafe Ralia is the answer to that question, and if you listen to Desiree and Mya talk about it you will hear why they decided to open not one cafe but two. One on the Plateau, inside La Maison Ralia at 4281 Saint-Laurent, and one on Rosemont, directly in front of the metro.
Because if Ralia is about an invitation to the table, then the table has to be reachable, which means both neighbourhoods and both ways of living get welcomed in.
Two locations, one philosophy
We are opening the doors this fall at 4281 Saint-Laurent, inside La Maison Ralia on the Plateau, and at 525 Rosemont. Expert coffee, hand poured, made by people who have spent their whole careers becoming really good at this. Joshua Bouchard, one of our Cafe Operations Leads, has ten years in specialty coffee and brings a depth of knowledge that shows up in every cup, and he laid all of it out when he and Melissa Walsh sat down with us for the first cafe conversation.
But here is what makes it different from the third wave coffee shops you already know.
There is a vibe with your cup
Each pour comes with an intention baked into the experience, and we call it a vibe. CREATIVE, CALM, JOY, DANCE. You pick what you need that day and then the coffee and the music and the space around you go to work on it, quietly, without anybody making a production of it.
You can actually work here
The co-working community gathers on Tuesdays from 8:30 to 4:30, and you can read how Work Well came together before you join one, or simply claim a table on any other day for as long as you need it. Pour overs happen slow because that is how they are meant to happen, conversations happen at the next table, and strangers turn into people who nod at each other. That is the third space we are building.
There is a Kids Club
Changing tables in the bathrooms, and a Kids Club gathering every Sunday morning downstairs from the cafe, which you will find alongside everything else on our calendar, because parents deserve to get their coffee and sit down with it without the whole thing feeling impossible.
The coffee itself is philosophy
In the episode, Desiree and Mya talk about the chain of craft that runs from farmer to roaster to barista, and about how the money actually travels back along it, so that one purchase here is connected to somebody else's livelihood somewhere far from here. That is not a marketing line, that is how we are building it, and it is the same thinking behind how we choose to operate in this city.
So what does this have to do with your holiday party?
We are so glad you asked.
Cafe Ralia opens this fall, and La Maison Ralia is ready right now for your holiday celebration, the event space and the hotel and the whole gathering place. In a year when half the parties end up in a fluorescent lit restaurant basement, there is something deeply good about gathering somewhere that was built for connection in the first place.
We book holiday events at Connections, our 100 person event space downstairs from the cafe and the hotel rooms, and we book them for exactly this reason. Corporate parties, family celebrations and team offsites all land differently in a room that was designed to hold people rather than simply fit them, and you can see what an evening actually costs on our rates page before you speak to anyone.
Here is what we know about Ralia events. The team shows up early and asks what you actually need instead of what the template says you should want, the sound is good, the space holds something, and the energy in the room has shifted by the end of the night.
If your holiday party needs a home that feels like more than renting a room, we are here. You can tell us your date, or take one of the suites upstairs if what you are planning is smaller and slower.
What Desiree and Mya get into
Why coffee turned out to be the missing piece, because when you are building an ecosystem of wellness and connection, coffee is not an afterthought sitting beside it, it is foundational to it.
How Human Design shaped the cafe concept, which is to say the same tool we built La Maison Ralia around also applies to a coffee shop, and it does.
The team that made it real. Joshua Bouchard brought the expertise, Melissa Walsh brought the nourishment lens, and a whole community brought the belief that a cafe like this was possible, which is a thread running all the way back to the team that opened the hotel.
Why two locations matter, because a cafe only for the Plateau is not Ralia, and a cafe that a person working near the Rosemont metro can walk into is.
And how it all weaves together, the holiday parties at Connections, the cafe in the building, the rooms upstairs and the co-working community, into one place where people actually want to spend their time.
Here is your invitation
Listen to the full episode above. Desiree and Mya talk the way two people talk when they are sitting across from a friend, and not the way people talk when they are pitching you on something, and somewhere in that conversation you will probably recognise something you have been looking for.
Book your holiday gathering at Connections, because the space is ready and our team is ready, and whether you are fifteen people or one hundred we design the night around what you came for.
And mark your calendar for Cafe Ralia opening this fall in both neighbourhoods, because we are looking forward to pouring your first cup.
This episode is about more than coffee. It is about what happens when people who care about people build something together, and about permission to do business a different way, and about the question underneath all of it, which is what if we actually invited everyone to the table. If you want the longer version of how any of this began, how it all started is still the best place to begin, and Founder's Notes is where Mya writes down where we are now.
You are invited to the table.