Are cafés the new bars?

It's a few days out from when a new series of morning pop-up DJ sets called Croissound is about to take over Cass Café. Since posting about it, co-organizer Lisa Rey and her partner Bassil Sawaya have seen 100,000 views with upwards of 100 people texting and DMing them for details.

"We found out that people in LA were doing events in coffee shops. Then our algorithm started pushing events in Toronto. Then you see someone did it in Dubai. So we were like, OK, if that works somewhere else, it should work also in Montreal," Lisa says.

But beyond being an imported trend, Croissound is tapping into something bigger—Montrealers, like so many others, are shifting the way they socialize. A night out is now weighed against rising rents, shrinking budgets, and a shifting sense of what’s worth the money. A $5 Americano and a DJ set? That’s an easy yes. A $20 cocktail and cover charge? Not so much.