When the Hwy. Café brought its yellow-and-black trailer to pop up in Vancouver last fall, the line stretched down the block and around the corner, as excited customers waited for the vegan chick’n wraps that Pemberton residents have easy access to all the time. Guests at the café come from as far as Merritt and consider the four-hour drive worthwhile for the Big Crunch Burger, made from chickpea patties and dipped in smoky-sweet barbecue sauce. The Beyond Meat smash burgers, organic tofu bánh mì and hand-cut Greek fries overcome the stereotypes of plant-based meals so deftly that some customers learn only after multiple meals that everything on the menu is fully vegan.
As fear and unpredictability gripped the nation at the onset of the pandemic, Leonel Marques, a chef, and Laura Mooney, a social worker, envisioned a better future. Marques had worked at restaurants like Basalt in Whistler and Miradoro at Tinhorn Creek Winery in Oliver. They spent March of 2020 turning their passion for plant-based foods into a dream restaurant. Mooney and Marques saw the unique opportunity to transform a small industrial-park space in Pemberton — most recently an engineer’s office — into a casual vegan café. By April, they’d finished the business plan for their takeout-burger-and-sandwich joint and signed the lease on the space that would soon become the Hwy. Café.
The endeavour combined Mooney’s love of vegan cuisine with Marques’s innovative plant-based recipes, such as giant chicken-style soy curl wraps and a selection of house-made sauces. It catered to people who otherwise struggled to find casual-restaurant options with gluten-free buns and non-dairy milk for coffee.
Situated just off bike trails and en route to hiking paths, the café aimed to give people meals that sustained all kinds of adventures on the slopes or trails. “We wanted to cater to people in Pemberton and their lifestyles,” says Mooney. “People are on the go, working hard, physical, intensive jobs.” So they designed their menu to keep customers full, fuelled and, ultimately, well-fed with delicious plant-based meals.
In June 2020, two weeks after signing the lease and before they even opened their doors, Mooney and Marques learned they would be going on an adventure of another sort: Mooney was pregnant with their son. The duo became a trio, and with their now-three-year-old always close at hand, they built the business as takeout-only in 2020 and 2021.
The open-plan kitchen gave patrons a window into the whirlwind of running a restaurant, and the spectacle proved to be part of the café’s draw. The controlled chaos of walking both hungry vegans and enthusiastic omnivores through the menu, taking orders and crafting lunches in a small space turned their hustle and bustle into a charming staple of their brand.
Another staple evolved out of Mooney’s background in social work, which is woven through the café’s DNA. From the beginning, the Hwy. Café looked to support the community, donating one day’s worth of tips to survivors of the Cottonwood house fires of 2020, using the sales of buffalo chick’n wraps from another particular day to aid a community member fighting cancer and assisting the family of a dedicated tribal police sergeant of the Líl’wat Nation who passed away suddenly. “Giving back has always been really important to us,” says Mooney. “We are very fortunate that we can, so we will.”
As the business grows, so too do their efforts. In 2021, Mooney and Marques bought the trailer, which mostly lives right next to the café, allowing them to manage the ever-expanding fan base and reduce wait times. But as shown by its trip to Vancouver last year, it also allows them to bring vegan goodness to new people and places.
Earlier this year, the trailer headed into Pemberton Village, where the Hwy. Café gave away 65 portions of sriracha-spiced french fries, loaded up with Beyond Meat chorizo crumbles, two kinds of peppers and the house-made hot sauce, to volunteers at the annual Wildfire and Emergency Preparedness Day. The aptly named Inferno Fries are now a staple on the menu, demonstrating how growing a business, a community, a family and awareness of plant-based cuisine all merge to become one highway.
The Secret to Soy Curls
Customers line up down the block for the Hwy. Café’s chick’n wraps, and co-founder Laura Mooney spills the secrets on how they prepare the craveable soy curls.
They use a product called Butler’s Soy Curls, which they soak in warm water or broth for 10 to 15 minutes, then strain and squeeze out any excess liquid. “Squeezing the extra liquid out is key!” says Mooney. They fry the curls in oil over high heat until they begin to brown. Only after the curls are cooked can they add their special sauces — otherwise, the sauce burns. The final step? Enjoy!