Retail Design Blog Features Avling Kitchen & Brewery
Avling Kitchen & Brewery by LAMAS was featured on Retail Design Blog as part of its coverage of contemporary hospitality and retail environments. The project is located in Toronto’s Leslieville neighbourhood and occupies a former mid-century grocery store that has been extensively adapted into a brewery, restaurant, and rooftop farm.
The feature focuses on the adaptive reuse of the original 1940s structure and its transformation into a highly integrated food and beverage production space. It highlights how the design introduces natural light, exposed structure, and spatial openness into a previously enclosed industrial interior, supporting both public hospitality and on-site brewing operations.
On the project, James Macgillivray notes:
“The buildings foundations and roof structure had originally been built for use as a supermarket in the first half of the 20th Century. There was storage in the basement but nothing like the 22,000 litres of liquid that we were required to house there. Not to mention the fact that large sections of the ground floor slab had to be removed for the 16 foot tall, 4,000 litre fermentation tanks, or that on top of everything, the client had planned on installing a vegetable garden on the roof.”
The project is defined by its “field to glass” concept, where brewing, food preparation, and agriculture are interlinked within a single architectural system. A rooftop garden supplies ingredients to the kitchen, while visible brewing infrastructure and structural interventions reinforce the building’s dual role as both production facility and public gathering space.