Volo Caffé Ristorante Opens Its Doors

Owner of Country Cut N’ Curl Salon, a competitor of the House of Lords salon further up Yonge street, converts into Volo Ristorante Café at the corner of Yonge & Dundonald St.  

Ralph Buy's Volo

After visiting for the first time on a Valentine’s day date, Ralph, his partner and sister purchase the restaurant and change the name to Caffe Volo.

Caffe Volo & 90's Yonge St.

Ralph and his partner become sole owners and dedicate themselves to changing Caffè Volo into a rustic trattoria with jazz music, wine, coffee and southern Italian food.

First Craft Beer On Tap

Dennison’s Weissbier, a german-style Hefeweizen becomes the first locally made craft beer on tap at Caffè Volo. Dennison’s, Scotch Irish, and Churchkey are among the first breweries featured on tap. At this time, Volo was starting to pique the interest of craft beer enthusiasts online through a forum called “The Bar Towel”. Slowly, the clientele new customers were coming in for the new beers on tap. 

Cask Ale Pumps Installed

Eager to keep growing, Ralph takes off for England to attend the Great British Beer Festival and discover the roots and tradition of cask ale. Cask ale is unpasteurized, unfiltered and naturally carbonated an English style of beer that contains active yeast and often doesn’t finish fermenting until it’s poured. A hand-pump is installed at the bar and Caffè Volo introduces traditional cask-ale made by Granite and Durham Brewery.

Beginning Of Cask Days

As interest grows in cask-conditioned beers, a new beer festival is planned for Caffè Volo: Cask Days. The name refers to the life cycle of a cask ale: once the cask is tapped, the ale only has a few days to be consumed in its ideal form, it’s “Cask Days”. In the festival the 22 casks of ale would be enjoyed over 6 hours by 150 attendees. Special beers were produced just for Cask Days, local breweries showed their finesse with experiments in format and flavour.

The “IPA Challenge”

Following the success of the first Cask Days, the IPA challenge was launched with a single elimination bracket tournament where beers are judged blind.facing off. The competitive element of this event spurs innovation in IPAs around Ontario such as the introduction of Duggan’s #9 and Amsterdam Boneshaker which debuted for the first time at the IPA challenge. As the years go on the IPAs served improve vastly.

A New Import Company

Ralph travels to different beer festivals and sparked an interest in importing beers, which at the time were a bit more ahead in quality outside of Ontario. Dieu du Ciel! And Hopfenstark brewery from Québec were the first two breweries part of the portfolio

House Ales Nano Brewery

A 100L nano brewery (advanced home-brew pilot brew system) is installed in Caffe Volo’s kitchen property dubbed “House Ales”. The first beer from House Ales was the Caustic Commencement Saison, in collaboration with Biergotters, a well known home-brew club at the time. Ralph begin’s brewing a range of cask-conditioned ales served on traditional hand-pumps.

Cask Days Out Grows Volo

Cask Days outgrows Caffè Volo’s patio and moves to the University of Toronto’s Hart House featuring 80+ casks, over one day and 1000 people.

Caffè Volo Becomes Bar Volo

With the encouragement of Ralph’s sons Tomas and Julian, who are slowly becoming more involved, Caffè Volo closes for a renovation and re-opens with a fresh new look and name, “Bar Volo”. The number of taps increased to 26, allowing for an A-Z tap list with letter press handles, including 6 new cask ales, and bar service inspired by UK bar culture. The daily photo posted of the tap list chalkboard to the Bar Volo twitter became a who’s who of up and coming breweries. 

Cask Days Comes To Brickworks

Cask Days moves to Evergreen Brickworks for one weekend, featuring 200+ casks over 2 days and features not only beer, but art, music and food from the city's top restaurants.  

The Height Of Craft Beer & Zwanze Day

Volo is recognized as one of the top craft beer destinations in Canada, awarded best beer bar by Ratebeer, Beer Advocate and Bar Towel. Bar Volo is a hub for brewers and beer lovers to come together. A new event for the bar, “We Live For the Funk”, a celebration of wild sour farmhouse beers gains the recognition of Belgium’s Cantillion, and Bar Volo is granted the privilege of being one of 50 bars across the world to serve Cantillon’s Zwanze for Zwanze Day. 

Birreria Volo Opens In Little Italy

Julian and Tomas Morana lease the old Souz Dal / Tiki Bar space and open Birreria Volo in Toronto’s Little Italy neighbourhood on September 11th, 2016. Birreria’s space was an old alleyway next to the historic royal cinema and was the first bar in Canada to feature imported craft beer on draught, starting with Oxbow’s (Portland, Maine) farmhouse brews on its first night alongside international styles like Lambic.

Bar Volo Closes It's Doors

After 31 years at the corner of Yonge and Dundonald, Bar Volo is forced to close it’s doors due to a condominium development. Bar Volo hosted Cantillon Zwanze day on its final night and a line formed around the block from opening to close to get one last pint.  

Cask Days Becomes Largest Cask Festival In North America

Cask Days reaches its peak with 417 Casks and over 12 000 attendees. This surpasses the previous record held by Chicago.

Bar Volo Re-Opens

With a carefully selected new location in the same area, a rustic low-lit atmosphere off the beaten path but still only 100 meters from the original, Bar Volo reopens on October 1st in the former Shred Central skatepark building at 17 Nicholas Street. The new iteration is a fusion of a classic and British pub with a 5HL brewing system.  

Pandemic Pivot

Just as a new era of Volo is beginning the Covid-19 pandemic forces both Volo locations to close indoor dining. Both bars began operating as bottle shops with takeout food. For the first time Volo can sell beer to go and launched a online web shop.  After a historic turn out, Cask Days comes to an end at Brickworks. With a new vogue for orange wine on the horizon, Keep 6 imports begins the transition to importing natural wine. 

Bottega Volo Opens Inside The Royal Cinema

Fridges from Birreria’s pandemic bottle shop were moved next door into the lobby of the historic Royal Cinema where a new chapter begins with Bottega Volo, a bottle shop and concession stand unlike any other. It had Volo flair in an unlikely location: in the place of fountain sodas were cocktails, instead of hot dogs and nachos, paninis. And on the way to the ticket booth were glimmering bottles of Volo beer, imported wine and fish tins. 

First Brew At New Location

Bar Volo appoints Chris Evans as their brewmaster and changes the brewery name from “House Ales” to “Volo”. With the help of Luc “Bim” Lafontaine, Lotto Uno (Pale Ale) was the first beer brewed and sold on tap.

Cask Days Returns

After a three year hiatus, Cask Days returns to its roots on Bar Volo’s patio, featuring 40+ casks from local breweries, taking place over 3 days 

Collaborations

Volo’s previous endeavours into importing and producing come together with original product collaborations with Willabald on a vodka grape seltzer intended to taste and be named “Purple”, an orange, red and rosé with Niagara’s Rosewood (now in its 2nd vintage) and finally an international collaboration with Germany’s Andi Weigand: Volare. “Volare” means to fly in Italian, and that’s what the Volo project has always been about, leaving the confinements of what a bar is meant to offer, learning from the world beyond our walls and staying in the pilot’s seat as we navigate our future. 

40th Year Anniversary & Bottega Expansion

Volo celebrates 40 years at all locations May 30th and 31st. On the horizon: a new location for the bottle shop in the former site of the jewelry store neighbouring the cinema and a lobby transformed into an Italian café.