North Vancouver’s Lonsdale Quay is an area with stunning waterfront views, an abundant amount of great local businesses, and activities to enjoy. One of the food vendors in the area, Craffles, has been part of the market for years now.
This family-owned and operated shop, a part of the diverse choice of food vendors at the Lonsdale Quay Market, offers a variety of tasty waffles, crepes, and monster milkshakes.
We sat down with owner and operator, Priscila Gouvea Lagreca, to chat about how she started at the market and their popular sweet and savory waffles/crepes.
How did Craffles get started?
[Priscila]: I’ve been in the restaurant business market field, actually for quite a while. It’s been like 13 years now.
And when I moved to Vancouver, I was looking for a place to open a business. But I didn’t know at the time which business I was going to open. I was walking by the market and I saw a spot available and then we decide to open something here because it’s very local business and like, we were new here by the time.
Why did you choose to make waffles and crepes?
[Priscila]: I’ve been working with all kinds of food that you can imagine…like Mexican, Brazilian, sushi, but never crepes and waffles.
But when we decided for this location, they told us that we should come up with something more different. So they didn’t have any crepes and waffles and brunch style breakfast. And then I just decided to make crepes and waffles.
What is your most popular dish?
[Priscila]: Our most seller this here is Nutella Fruits Crepe for sure. People love Nutella.
Where do you get your ingredients?
[Priscila]: We have some suppliers here in Vancouver. We have like five suppliers that they supply all the Nutella and all the cheese. And every most of our supplies, they are local.
How do you make your most popular crepe?
[Priscila]: So usually we make fresh batter every day. And our staff just put the batter on the crepe machine until it’s brownish. We just turn on the other side and you fold it and you’ll put some Nutella on the top of it and you’ve got some bananas as strawberry put on it fold it again, like a triangle. And that’s it.
It’s quite a simple and delicious.
How has the pandemic affected business?
[Priscila]: Well, it affected us a lot. At the beginning, we struggled a lot and had to lay off some employees.
Even though we already had UberEATS, Skip The Dishes and third party food delivery apps integrated – which was good for us at the time – we were still not happy with what was happening. So we decided to come up with a new basket and new dishes, which is more convenient to people that were at home.
For example, pre-pandemic we sold these Monster Shakes. We decided to may set up a box where you can build your own Monster Shake at home. That was good for us.
But now things are kind of coming back, things are picking up slowly.
This was a short chat with Craffles owner Priscila, about their start at the market and the various crepes and waffles they make.
Next time you’re craving flavourful, sweet treat, head over to Craffles!
Address: 116-123 Carrie Cates Ct, North Vancouver, BC V7M 3K7
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*This interview was made possible by Emma Albert