Hutu Café draws crowds in Rankin Inlet

As a Plan B, Rankin Inlet’s new Hutu Café is proving pretty popular for owner Nathalie Taylor.

Customer Jen Webb receives a slice of apple crumble from barista Josepha Noolook at Rankin Inlet’s Hutu Café on Thursday. (Photo by Daron Letts)

When the 28-year-old entrepreneur opened her gourmet coffee and pastry shop on Aug. 8 at 141 Mivvik Ave., the crowds came and kept coming.

Its name comes from a slang word in Inuktitut, meaning “What’s up?”

“It was crazy,” Taylor said about the opening. Close to 1,000 people — one third of the hamlet’s population — spilled inside over six hours, she estimates.

“It really motivated us to keep going,” she said. “Our hard work was paying off.”

The cozy café has seating for more than a dozen patrons. Natural sunlight envelops the interior through a large, northeast-facing window. Eye-catching cheese cakes, pistachio crumble cones and other decadent desserts beckon from a long glassed-in display.

The wall-sized chalk-scrawled menu features more than a dozen caffeine-delivery options, from iced coffees and espressos to Spanish lattes and teas, all available with dairy and non-dairy options.

“Mamatuq,” said customer Joanie Denomme, who used the Inuktitut word for “delicious” when asked to review the café’s fare on Thursday morning.

Curious, Denomme and her Agnico Eagle co-workers had popped in for the first time. Their office is just around the corner.

“Of course we’re coming back,” she said.

Later, school teacher Jen Webb ordered a London Fog with an apple crisp. Since attending that packed grand opening, her daily routine has been to sample a new item each day. She hasn’t had to place the same order twice, she said.

Taylor opened the café with her business partner and father, plumbing and heating contractor Neco Towtongie.

Prior to her latest venture, Taylor ran Inspired by Nadvat, a home-based sewing and parka-making business named after her first daughter, now age nine, in 2018, as a way to simultaneously provide an income and childcare.

Lashed by Nat, a home-based eyelash extension business, followed in 2022, a few years after seven-year-old Adeline was born.

Debilitating nerve pain in both Taylor’s hands, caused by cubital tunnel syndrome, shuttered those businesses. The entrepreneurial mother considered other startups, like a floral shop, before finally acting on the café.

Taylor and her father already shared a food-service business in Rosemary’s Canteen, a food truck that they operated for four seasons during Pakallak Tyme, the hamlet’s spring festival, and the Calm Air Cup softball tournament.

They parked the truck this year to focus on the café, but they might fire up the truck next summer, Taylor said.

She and her dad started the food truck in honour of Taylor’s late great aunt Rosemary Sandy, who used to feed stew and bannock to the community from a tent she erected at community gatherings, more for love than for money.

Now Taylor has a helper in full-time employee Josepha Noolook.

“She’s my G.O.A.T,” Taylor said, using the slang acronym for “greatest of all time”.

The business also employs two part-time staff.

Hours are 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays.