The industrial stretch of Richmond near the Auto Mall is about to smell like fresh cinnamon rolls and whisked matcha.
Toki, a mint-green matcha trailer, soft-opened on July 17, and until July 19 from 11am to 3pm, you can get 15% off the whole menu and a free sweet treat while supplies last.
The name might be new, but the people behind it aren’t.
Toki comes from Jeff and Joyce, the duo behind Teaspoons Co., the Burnaby Heights tea shop known for real fruit and Japanese stone-milled tea.
They spent four months getting the trailer through permits and licenses, after years of hauling sinks, tables, and half their shop to every pop-up they did.
They’d hunted for a second brick-and-mortar space, but kept hitting units with wrong zoning or no proper plumbing.
So they built the space themselves, on wheels.
Toki means time in Japanese, and their launch note puts it plainly: time is too valuable to spend waiting for the perfect moment, so they decided to create one instead.
The menu is tighter and more matcha-forward than the mothership, and that’s by design: in their own words, the trailer exists for a more refined menu with seasonal items they can’t commit to serving every day at Teaspoons.
Iced matcha lattes come with a choice of two first-harvest, single-origin matchas: Okumidori from Uji with a vegetal, floral profile, or Baikō from Shizuoka, nuttier and roasted.
The rest of the drinks list runs Matcha Matcha, a matcha topped with Baikō ice cream, a toasted almond matcha with house-made cold foam, mango and strawberry matchas with real fruit, a hojicha latte, and fresh watermelon juice.
The only posted add-on price so far: $2.50 stacks a fresh financier onto that toasted almond matcha.
Food is short and deliberate: a cheesy melt with sun-dried tomatoes, a tuna melt with shiso and pickled red onions, freshly baked cinnamon rolls, a French almond financier, and house-made matcha ice cream built on their Baikō.
The trailer format isn’t just for the soft open either.
Richmond will serve as Toki’s semi-permanent home base when the trailer isn’t out at events and pop-ups.
For matcha people, two single-origin first-harvest options out of a trailer window is a flex worth the drive to Wireless Way.
Toki joins the list of recently opened food spots in Richmond like One Cafe Lansdowne Centre, Watt A Truck, and Taoke.
For more new and upcoming food spots in Metro Vancouver, take a peek at our tracker here, and subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
Address: 13888 Wireless Way, Richmond BC