It’s rarely open and when it is, it’s hard to get to but when it’s open Mario’s Marvelous Movie Emporium is one of Yellowknife’s best kept secrets.
First opening a year ago, the cafe is located on a purple and Yellow houseboat that is anchored in Yellowknife Bay between the government docks and Jolliffe Island.
The one-room place is a floating cafe offering hot drinks and cinnamon buns – but only when the green flag is flying in the wind.
“We're not open to make money, we're open to have fun,” said Frans Barnard, owner of the cafe.
The houseboater said that the idea to open a business on the water came to him due to a life well-travelled and a lack of good coffee options in town.
“Well we travel a lot and our measure of any town that we go into is can I get a good brunch and can I get a good coffee and so when we moved here we were looking,” said Barnard “We've had an increase in the number of coffee options in town which has been great ... but, what we wanted was a place that people could just come in and if they wanted they could just sit and read a book.”
“What we found is there are a lot of folks who live on land, who had never been on a houseboat,” said Barnard. “The houseboaters were that kind of group out there, tax evading/dodging kind of hippies and so we thought it would be kind of fun to have a place where houseboaters and Yellowknife land-based folks could get together.”
Now Barnard, who runs the business year round with the exception of break up and freeze up, runs a ‘pay what you want’ system to keep with the idea of the cafe being a business of fun.
That means that there are no set prices on anything that is offered onboard. It’s a system that allows for fun and practicality, said Barnard.
“It I think for some people I think it amplifies the stress because they’re so used to knowing exactly how much they should pay and then they get really discomforted by it, Which I find amusing most of the time,” said Barnard.
“Other times we've had people come by that are just out for a paddle or a ski or whatever and they have no money on them and it's all good.”
The cafe is one of two business’ that are located on houseboats, just down the bay is the Floating B and B.