This weekend, a new, nine-seat coffee shop specializing in plant-based, gluten-free baked goods was due to open in Osborne Village. Suffice it to say, that won’t be happening.

"The other day I was dropping off boxes of doughnuts to customers’ homes. Somebody commented that while I was preparing to open nothing could have prepared me for this. I was like, ‘Yeah, you can say that again,’" says Maureen Gelvis-Pflueger, owner of Monuts Café at 120 Scott St.

Maureen Gelvis-Pflueger is the owner of Monuts Café, an Osborne village doughnut shop that specializes in plant-based, gluten-free doughnuts and baked goods.

Two weeks prior to her scheduled March 28 grand opening — days before the COVID-19 virus turned the restaurant industry and, seemingly, everything else in Canada and the United States upside down — Gelvis-Pflueger, a married mother of three, invited Rev. Eric Giddens of St. Paul the Apostle Church over to bless her premises. After reading a passage from the Bible, he led her and her store manager through The Lord’s Prayer, then sprinkled holy water about the 690-square-foot space. Although she doesn’t refer to herself as "super-religious or anything like that," she is counting on her faith to help get through the days and weeks ahead, until she can open the doors for real.

"I was raised Catholic and went to a Catholic school," she says, when reached by phone. "I no longer go to church on a regular basis but I do pray on my own almost every day. That’s how I connect with Him. Am I disappointed we’re not opening (today)? Of course. But Winnipeggers are being so kind. They’re not just ordering a dozen doughnuts (for delivery), they’re ordering three, four, five (dozen)...

"People ask if I’m sitting around feeling sorry for myself and I tell them no, there’s lots of work to do."

Gelvis-Pflueger was born in Cavite City in the Philippines. Before moving to Winnipeg in 2010, she studied hotel and restaurant management. She continued down that path after arriving here, enrolling in a similar, 10-month course at Robertson College. Jobs in her chosen field followed; first as an in-store manager at Starbucks and later as a shift supervisor at a downtown hotel. When she wasn’t working or raising her three children, ages 17, 13 and 4, she was working out at the gym.

Around this time last year, Gelvis-Pflueger joined the World Natural Bodybuilding Federation. She participated in a sanctioned competition held in Winnipeg in May 2019, placing fifth in the women’s Fit Body category. Two weeks later she got the idea for Monuts. (OK, her business name — a play on Mo Mo, what most of her friends call her — came a bit later.)

"While preparing for the competition, I adopted a strict, vegan diet," she explains, noting she’s lactose intolerant. "My body adjusted really well and I felt more energized than I ever had before. Except as soon as the competition was over I binged, eating all kinds of junk food. Almost immediately my acne flared up, I had stomach aches; ‘OK, enough of that,’ I told myself."

Still wanting to treat herself once in a while, she experimented briefly with protein bars, baking a few batches in her kitchen at home. That’s when it hit her: why not try something more fun, by applying the same ingredients she was using in protein bars to doughnuts, one of her longtime, guilty pleasures, instead?

Monut’s Nutty Chocolate Monuts.

"Because they’re plant-based, the biggest challenge was texture," she says, listing coconut milk, all-natural peanut butter, brown rice and rolled oats as some of her key ingredients. "My first couple of tries were either too runny or too dense. But after switching from an electric mixer to mixing them by hand, I was finally able to come up with a consistency I liked."

Things started to take off after she began showing up at the gym with a mix of double-chocolate, chocolate-mint and nutty chocolate — she uses non-dairy chocolate exclusively — doughnuts to snack on. Soon, gym members were requesting a dozen or two for themselves, too; so much so that by July she could barely squeeze her gym bag, jammed with containers of doughnuts, into her vehicle.

"People were telling me I needed to go on Shark Tank or Dragon’s Den, but in my mind it wasn’t a business yet. It was just me making doughnuts for me, friends and friends of friends," she says.

As word of what she was up to spread to other Winnipeg gyms, as well as to people living with dietary restrictions, leading to even more requests, her mindset began to shift. Maybe she was onto something.

Last September, by which time she had begun renting space in a string of commercial kitchens to keep up with demand, Gelvis-Pflueger spotted an online ad posted by the owners of a building under construction in Osborne Village that, when it was completed, was going to be a mixed-use residential, commercial and office space. She met with the landlords, pitching her idea of a street-level café that not only served nutrition-rich goodies but also coffee produced by local brewers such as Jacked Up Jill and DeLuca’s. As well, she spoke of reserving shelf space for a variety of made-in-Manitoba products — jams, honey and such.

A tray full of sweet treats.

She signed on the dotted line last October and spent the next five months securing the necessary licences, shopping for furniture and training staff.

And then...

For now it’s business as usual, or at least what counts for usual these days, she says. She plans to continue offering home delivery three days a week to a long list of regular customers, people she met at the gym or at various pop-up markets she participated in during the winter months. She beams, recounting how a five-year-old came running back to her booth in January to tell her Monuts were the best doughnuts he’d ever tasted. She’s also continue to develop new flavours with the intention of offering weekly specials when the café opens sometime down the road. As well, she’s perfecting recipes for protein-rich, sugar-free muffins, scones and cupcakes.

"I did my first bake at the shop just last week. Even though we’re not letting people inside yet, it still felt nice to have a place of my own after months of lugging my supplies from one commercial kitchen to another," she says, mentioning her doughnuts can be stored in the freezer for up to six months and, because there’s no dairy, stay fresh at room temperature for up to three weeks if they’re in a sealed container.

One more thing; if you get in touch with Gelvis-Pflueger through her website (www.monutscafe.com) or Instagram page, don’t ask if she sells something similar to Timbits or Robin’s Eggs.

"Everybody asks about the holes; it’s become almost a running joke," she says with a laugh. "No, I tell them, I use a silicone mould for my doughnuts so, sorry, there are no holes or eggs or whatever you want to call them. What you see is what you get."

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca

Orange buttercream doughnuts are available at Monuts on Scott Street.

David Sanderson

Dave Sanderson was born in Regina but please, don’t hold that against him. Read full biography