Review: Air Canada Café at Toronto Pearson (YYZ)

A new kind of lounge

On September 6, 2019, Air Canada opened a new type of lounge: Air Canada Café.

Air Canada now has 3 lounge brands:

Maple Leaf: reserved for passengers (paying or using an Aeroplan award ticket):
- traveling on business class on Air Canada or Star Alliance partners
- Star Alliance Gold members
- Aeroplan Super Elite Members, 35K, 50K, 75K
- and holders of certain premium credit card such as the Aeroplan^MD* American Express^MD Reserve card .

Signature Suite: reserved for paying passengers (excluding Aeroplan reward tickets) in Air Canada’s international business class

Café: reserved exclusively for travelers taking a domestic flight:

in Business or Premium Rouge Class
or Aeroplan Super Elite, Aeroplan 75K or 50K members
or Star Alliance Gold members
Some premium credit card , such as the TD^® Aeroplan^® Visa Infinite ^{Privilege*card}

This lounge is located in Toronto ‘s domestic terminal (1) near gate D20 (used primarily for departures to Montreal-Trudeau YUL).

It is open from 5:15 a.m. to midnight daily:

In its Air Canada Café, Air Canada introduces the “Grab & Go” concept.

Thus, you are invited to take food and drinks with you. This is not normally the case in other airport lounge!

To this end, Air Canada provides “Air Canada Café” paper bags (visible below on the right of the photo).

At the entrance to the Air Canada Café, Air Canada agents are available to assist you in your travel plans.

While visiting this lounge around 10am, I was impressed by the variety of food and drinks on offer.

Here are some pictures of the choices offered by Air Canada:

There’s something for everyone, from Greenhouse juices to Kombuchas to a variety of cold-pressed organic juices, flavoured waters…

There are even Lindt chocolate truffles, fine OKA cheese and high-end Goûter pastries.

The very principle of a café… is to serve coffee!

On this point, you have 2 choices. Either the take away method:

Or asking the Barista at the counter!

I chose this method and particularly enjoyed my Lavazza double espresso. Especially after the redeye from San Francisco!

Given the concept of the “Grab and Go” lounge, travellers do not stay very long in this one. So it’s easy to find seats…

… or workspaces, all with electrical and USB sockets.

Or just sit at the counter (seats are also equipped with USB sockets).

Air Canada Café also has men’s and women’s toilets.

Air Canada Café is a great new concept introduced by Air Canada. This should help to relieve some of the burden on the Maple Leaf lounge.

Let’s hope that the airline will reproduce this concept of Air Canada Café at other Canadian airports, including Montreal-Trudeau.

Actually, the Maple Leaf lounge in the domestic zone would really need to be supported by an Air Canada Café given its peak-hour traffic!

To access VIP lounges without paying $50 each time, check our complete guide on free airport lounge access and our best credit cards for airport VIP lounges ranking, updated monthly by the Milesopedia team.