Dancing the morning away: Sober parties are taking over Montreal coffee shops

A new, alcohol-free dance party is rising in popularity in Montreal as people look for alternatives to nighttime clubbing.

There’s a new kind of party brewing in town where the beats are as fresh as the coffee beans and instead of doing tequila shots, revelers order shots of espresso.

They don’t pull an all-nighter. Instead, they dance the morning away inside their neighbourhood café.

That’s the idea behind Croissound, a new daytime dance party taking over Montreal coffee shops.

Founder Lisa Rey says she was tired of the nighttime clubbing scene in the city and wanted to try something different.

“If you’re not 18, do you really want to go on Saint-Laurent Street and wait outside to get into a club? I mean, when you’re 30, you don’t want this anymore,” Rey told CTV News.

Inspired by daytime dance parties in Los Angeles and Toronto, she decided to partner up with Cass Café in the Plateau-Mont-Royal borough for the inaugural event on Feb. 22, which Rey says turned out to be a smashing success. A second event at another café is scheduled for this weekend.

So many people showed up last month that they had to start letting people inside an hour before doors were set to open at 11 a.m.

“I was expecting, like, 30 people. I was expecting my friends to come and support me. So I was telling all of my friends, ‘Please come, please be there.’ And at the end, people were starting to come to the café at 9:00, while the event was starting at 11,” Rey told CTV News.

“And I just looked outside and maybe, like, 100 or 200 people were waiting outside.”

No alcohol, just vibes

Croissound is a free event that goes from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at a new venue each time, blending coffee, house music, and dancing.

Rey’s boyfriend, Bassil Sawaya, an electrical engineer who moonlights as a DJ, gets people moving on the dance floor. What sets the party apart from others, aside from being in the daytime, is it’s a sober affair.

Montreal is known for its popular electronic music events in the daytime in the summer months, like Piknic Électronik and Beachclub, though there are fewer options, particularly in the colder months, that are indoors, alcohol-free, and during the day.

“A lot of people were really happy that there was no alcohol,” Rey said.

“And also a lot of girls that were coming alone and were like, ‘Oh, I’m feeling safe in that kind of party’ because there is no alcohol, there is no Uber to take after, there is no walking alone at night. It was really kind of insane, like the emotion and the ambience of the party,” Rey explained.

The second edition of Croissound returns to the Plateau-Mont-Royal on Saturday but at a new venue — Café Bravo.

Cafés catching in on the trend

Croissound is not the first event in Montreal that brings coffee and dancing together.

Mowafaq Kallas, founder of Akrenim, and his partner, Karl Haddad, started organizing indoor, daytime dance parties in coffee shops and other smaller venues at the beginning of this year, also after being inspired by events in L.A.

Their first party was a ticketed event at Café Paper Hill in downtown Montreal on Jan. 12 that brought in about 100 people and was “a huge success,” Kallas told CTV News. He said he has organized three other daytime parties since then at various locations, including the last one last Sunday at Pangea Restaurant in Old Montreal.

Some of the events were alcohol-free, while others were at licenced venues, but all of them so far have gone viral thanks to social media, Kallas said.

The daytime party trend is catching on, he said, because people are looking to try something different than partying until 3 a.m.

“I think it’s just people are bored of waking up hungover and being super exhausted while they have things to do,” Kallas said.

“If they just get it out of the way, they start their morning with a good energy and stuff, I think it helps set the tone for the day.”

The next Akrenim event is slated to be held in early April at a yet-to-be announced location.

A boost for small businesses

The parties also seem to be good for business, too.

Gabrielle Letain-Mathieu is the owner of Cass Café, a cozy spot on Saint-Laurent Boulevard that emphasizes sustainability. She said since she hosted the first Croissound event in February, customers who attended are coming back to the café asking when the next party will be. A video of the daytime rave on their Instagram account keeps getting views.

At the time of the party, she had been open for less than six months and never expected to see hundreds of people lining up outside to get inside her little shop. Inside, she said it felt like “a community, which is what I wanted.”

“Having that many people inside and having fun and smiling is like the ‘I made it moment’ and, ‘Oh, this is my cafe.’ I think I didn’t realize it was my coffee shop until that moment because it’s easy to get caught up in the first year when you’re an owner. But that dancing and stuff really helped me realize that it was an experience I’ve never had before ever in my life,” she explained.

“It was the most amazing thing for my business, honestly.”