Malibu Barbie Cafe, the interactive pop up restaurant and roller rink celebrating one of the most iconic fashion dolls in history, will make its Canadian debut starting on August 13th at 70 The Esplanade in downtown Toronto.
The pop up is the product of an ongoing partnership between Bucket Listers, the U.S. media and experiences company known for turning major entertainment properties into real world destinations, and Mattel, Inc., the owner of the Barbie brand. Its arrival in Toronto follows ten sold out runs across the United States and Australia, having drawn more than 250,000 fans since the concept first launched in New York and Chicago, with subsequent stops in Miami, Mall of America, Austin, Boston, Houston, San Diego, Melbourne and Las Vegas.
For Bucket Listers, the choice of where to plant its first Canadian flag was not a difficult one.
“We love Canada, and especially the city of Toronto,” said Andy Lederman, Founder and CEO of Bucket Listers, in an interview with 6ixRetail. “We’ve done ten U.S. cities for the Malibu Barbie Cafe, and the only international market we’ve done so far is Melbourne, Australia, which ran through the beginning of this year. So when we were deciding to expand to Canada, of course we thought to come to Toronto first, and we found an incredible venue partner here in a great location on The Esplanade.”
Mattel’s Julie Freeland, Vice President of Global Location Based Entertainment, echoed that enthusiasm for the brand’s Canadian debut.
“We are delighted to announce the opening of Malibu Barbie Cafe in Toronto, bringing a truly unique experience that celebrates the Barbie brand and all she represents,” Freeland said. “From the decor to the menu, every detail has been thoughtfully designed to celebrate the iconic Barbie style.”
The site itself carries a bit of Toronto history. The cafe will take over a converted 19th century brick warehouse at the corner of The Esplanade and Church Street, most recently home to Goose Island Brewhouse, in the St. Lawrence Market district, a short walk from the Hockey Hall of Fame and Union Station.
Inside, the concept draws on the groovy beachside energy of 1970s Malibu, the era in which the original Malibu Barbie doll was first introduced. The fast casual menu is overseen by Master Chef finalist and Chopped Champion Chef Becky Brown, who Lederman said personally trains staff and is on site for every opening to keep the experience consistent from one city to the next.
“The menu is absolutely incredible,” Lederman said. “She trains the staff, and she’s always there for the opening. The food is fantastic, and the actual build out, the things you can actually do at the cafe, we’ve really perfected. We want to make sure there’s enough to do, whether it’s a family visiting or a girls’ night out or a date night.”
Beyond the dining room, guests will find a roller rink, a lineup of interactive activities, and an exclusive merchandise shop, an element Lederman singled out as a personal favourite.
“There’s merchandise here you genuinely can’t find anywhere else, all of it exclusive to the cafe,” he said. “And that’s really by design. Once you layer in the music, the theme nights, the adult nights, you start to understand that we didn’t just build a restaurant, we built a destination. There’s something in this experience for everyone who walks through the door.”
Proceeds from each roller skate rental will be donated to the cafe’s charity partner, Girls Inc. The programming calendar is set to include Cupcake Decorating Classes, Paint Parties and 21+ Skate Nights. Tickets, which include a food and merchandise credit, will be sold exclusively through Bucket Listers, with a waitlist open now ahead of tickets going on sale.
The Toronto opening arrives alongside a second and arguably larger piece of news. As of today, Bucket Listers is officially live in Canada, with Toronto as its first market outside the United States and Australia.
Since Lederman founded the company in 2018, Bucket Listers has sold 3 million tickets to experiences across 20 major U.S. cities and built a following of 20 million Americans through its social city guides, accounts like New York Bucket List and Chicago Bucket List that help locals find things to do in their own backyard. The app rollout is timed to launch alongside the cafe rather than trail behind it.
“People will be able to buy tickets to the Malibu Barbie Cafe on the Bucket Listers app and website in Toronto,” Lederman said, “but there will also be a lot of other great experiences they can browse and attend that will be live on our site and app throughout the city.”
Bucket Listers has built its reputation on treating licensed intellectual property as more than a backdrop. Through its Bucket Listers Presents division, led by President of Experiences Derek Berry, the company has recreated a series of fictional and branded spaces in painstaking detail, including a Blockbuster reimagined as a cocktail bar in Los Angeles, a rebuild of the kitchen from The Golden Girls with Disney, and a working replica of Family Guy’s Drunken Clam bar currently open in New York. All three, Lederman said, are candidates to eventually come to Canada.
That level of detail is deliberate, and Lederman treats it as close to a first principle of the business.
“That’s everything, honestly,” he said. “Fans know right away when something isn’t authentic. So we invest heavily in making sure these experiences feel real, that people believe they’re actually inside the world of the IP, done the right way. With Barbie especially, it has to be done right. We want everyone who walks through that door to leave loving Barbie even more than when they walked in.”
It’s a standard built on repetition. With Toronto marking the next city for the Malibu Barbie Cafe alone, Lederman said the company has learned exactly what makes the format work.
“We’ve had tens of thousands of creators visit the Malibu Barbie Cafe across all of its locations, and we know how to put on a really good experience,” he said. “There’s truly something for everyone.”
The company Bucket Listers is today was not the one Lederman set out to build. It began as a set of social media guides, and the leap into producing large-scale branded experiences with partners like Mattel and Disney, and more recently an investment from MARI, the live events company founded by Ari Emanuel and Mark Shapiro, was never part of the original plan.
“I did not think when I started the company, and built all of the social media guides so people could follow Toronto Bucket List or New York Bucket List, that we would actually end up creating our own and working with these great brands,” Lederman said. “I could not have expected all these incredible twists and turns and partnerships, but every decision that we’ve made has been to scale our mission, which is to help more and more people make it easy to get out and experience great things.”
For Lederman, the expansion into Toronto is also personal. He grew up in Detroit, a short drive from the border.
“This has always been a dream of mine growing up in Detroit, Michigan,” he said. “My family would drive every single summer, four hours to Toronto, to explore the city. It just makes me really happy and proud to think that there’s now Bucket Listers to help families like my own.”
Lederman sees ticketed, experiential pop ups as a category still in its early days, and one where the physical and digital increasingly feed each other. He pointed to the original 2023 launch of the Malibu Barbie Cafe, which coincided with the theatrical release of the Barbie film, as an early proof point, with press coverage of the real world cafe consistently circling back to the movie.
“We live in this hybrid digital physical world, where something that you do in the physical world can be seen by tens of millions or hundreds of millions of people in the digital world,” he said. “This is a new revenue stream for IP holders and a new way to connect with more audiences, both in the physical and digital world. Prior to Derek Berry creating Bucket Listers Presents, this wasn’t really ever done, and we think we’re only scratching the surface.”
The Malibu Barbie Cafe is only one piece of it. The wider platform pulls together experiences across every category a city has to offer, from museums to performing arts through a partnership with TodayTix and live concerts through a partnership with Live Nation, with that same February investment from MARI meant to speed that build out.
“We’re really trying to bring all of the different categories of experiences into one marketplace,” Lederman said, “so users can frictionlessly find something great that’s personalized for them, and all of these producers of experiences who we love to support can find the people that want to connect with them.”
Toronto is not expected to be the last Canadian stop. Lederman confirmed the company is already looking at Montreal and other major Canadian cities to replicate the model it has built in the United States.
“We plan to bring Barbie Cafes to major cities across Canada,” he said, “along with all of the IP based experiences we’ve created, and we plan to expand our partnerships with TodayTix and Live Nation into Canada as well. We see a lot of potential with cities like Toronto and Montreal.”
To that end, Bucket Listers is actively seeking venue partners to bring the Malibu Barbie Cafe to Montreal and Vancouver, as well as venues and experience producers in Toronto looking to reach new audiences through the platform. Interested parties can reach Zack Gorab, the company’s VP of Expansion, at [email protected].
Toronto Bucket List, the company’s local social presence, is already active ahead of today’s launch, with more content planned in the coming weeks. For Lederman, the Canadian debut is both a business milestone and a homecoming of sorts.
“We’re honored to bring the special sauce of Bucket Listers to Canada,” he said. “We hope we’re as well received in Canada as we have been in the U.S. We love Canada, so let’s see what happens.”
Malibu Barbie Cafe opens August 13th at 70 The Esplanade, Toronto. Follow @barbiecafeofficial for ticketing updates, and visit Bucket Listers to join the waitlist.
Dustin Fuhs is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of 6ix Retail, Toronto’s premier source for retail and hospitality industry news. As the former Editor-in-Chief of Retail Insider, Canada’s most-read retail trade publication, Dustin brings over two decades of expertise spanning retail, marketing, entertainment and hospitality sectors. His experience includes roles with industry giants such as The Walt Disney Company, The Hockey Hall of Fame, The Canadian Opera Company, Starbucks Canada and Blockbuster.
Recognized as a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert in 2024, 2025 and 2026, Dustin delivers insider perspectives on Toronto’s evolving retail landscape, from emerging brands to established players reshaping the city’s commercial districts.