Glenda Zember and Ron Jang became business owners purely by circumstance. In 2011 her family-owned building on the edge of East York became vacant. In between bookkeeping jobs, and babysitting to pay the bills, Glenda was looking for something new. So along with her brother, Ron Jang, and encouraged by the rest of the family, she decided to open the Nostalgia Coffee Company.
“I love to bake and my brother loves to cook,” says Glenda. “We never had experience in the restaurant business until now.”
Unchallenged in this yet-to-be gentrified corner near St. Clair and O’Connor on the border of Toronto and Scarborough, the café has quickly become a local favourite. It provides lunches and caffeine kicks to the workers and tradespeople that frequent the area, a meeting space for the residents of the nearby retirement complexes, and a place to work or study for locals.
