Oidé Coffee

From a coffee window to a Waterfall Building counter

The shop began as a small coffee window in the Downtown Eastside in 2019 and carried that idea into a fuller room: a place to pause, connect and have something honest, held in every cup and every bag. Oidé means come here in Japanese, which is a fair description of how the counter is run.

The espresso side does the daily work. Espresso and batch brew are the standing options, with almond, cow and oat milk, and the cortado and the White, the house milk-coffee order regulars ask for by name, are the two drinks that come up most. At the Waterfall Building café, hand-crafted filter is added at weekends, which slows the service down when there is time for it.

Origins on the shelf, Japanese tea beside them

The retail side is more ambitious than the room’s size suggests. Coffees are organised by origin across Ethiopia, Colombia, Kenya and Brazil, with named lots such as Lemon Spritz from Ethiopia, Cassis from Kenya, Peñas Blancas Gesha and Uluri, and bags from Dak Coffee Collective beside them.

Tea is stocked with the same specificity, including Roasted Oolong Kanayamidori, Green Tea Minekaori and Oolong Minamisayaka, which pushes the shelves past coffee into Japanese cultivar names. The café itself stays compact and design-conscious, calm and visually deliberate, with coffee quality ahead of menu breadth. It is family-run, and the team is the reason regulars talk about the place the way they do.

Order a white, then look at the bags

Plan around coffee, tea, pastries and retail. For a first visit, order an espresso drink such as the White or a cortado, then add a batch brew, or the weekend hand-crafted filter if the day allows it. Pastries are the clearest food category at this branch and the case is worth reading before ordering rather than after.

The business is still moving. A roastery is listed as coming soon, a webshop has been added, and a separate project in Mount Pleasant is planned with a bakery programme and in-house roasting. For now the Waterfall Building café remains the centre of it, which makes the retail shelf worth a look before leaving: Lemon Spritz from Ethiopia or Cassis from Kenya are the bags that show what the buying looks like, and the Japanese teas are the part most other Vancouver counters cannot match.