Construction hoarding went up Thursday night at the corner of University Avenue and Wellington Street West. Behind it, a Montreal favourite is preparing its Toronto debut.
Mezzmiz, the Lebanese fast-casual brand that built a following at Montreal’s Time Out Market before opening on rue Crescent, is taking roughly 1,500 square feet at 55 University Avenue. The corner unit, a former Starbucks and most recently home to Mofer Coffee, sits at the base of an 18-storey office tower in the heart of the Financial District, with direct access to the PATH.
Today, Mezzmiz operates one restaurant, at 1407 rue Crescent in downtown Montreal. A second Montreal location at 495 rue McGill is under construction, and Toronto will follow, with founder and CEO Nadim Hammoud targeting a soft launch for the University Avenue location at the end of November or early December.
6ixRetail.com sat down with Hammoud today inside the future Mezzmiz space to talk about the road from Beirut to the Financial District, why this location won out, and how far he plans to take the brand from here.
Toronto has been on Hammoud’s radar for longer than the hoarding suggests. His Montreal team regularly hears the same request from visitors who have travelled in from the GTA.
“We hear it all the time in Montreal. Guests come in from downtown Toronto, from Mississauga, from all over, and the first thing they ask is when we’re opening there,” Hammoud says. “Toronto is the biggest city in the country, and corporate catering is a major part of our business. For us, this was the natural next step.”
Hammoud is clear about what Mezzmiz is bringing to the city, and what it isn’t.
“Toronto has one of the most exciting food scenes in North America, and we know expectations here are high,” Hammoud acknowledges. “We’re not coming to simply open another Lebanese restaurant. We’re bringing our interpretation of Beirut’s food culture, refined over years of experience and designed for the way people live and work today. We want Mezzmiz to become part of everyday life in Toronto.”
Where to land was never really in question. Both Montreal locations, open and upcoming, sit in the centre of the city, a pattern Hammoud established long before he arrived in Canada. “Downtown is part of our DNA,” he explains. “My philosophy has never changed: bring high-end food into a fast-casual setting. Do that well, and you can serve a student and a CEO side by side.”
That philosophy took shape in Beirut, where Hammoud spent more than a decade building restaurant concepts in the city’s downtown core. His portfolio included Brgr.co, Pzza.co, Deli.co, Lbstr.co and the Lebanese concept UMMI, along with a large catering business serving nearby offices and residents.
When the August 2020 port explosion devastated central Beirut, his restaurants were badly damaged. Rather than rebuild, Hammoud moved his family and executive team to Montreal, as CityNews reported last year. There, he and co-founder Rony Zibara launched Mezzmiz during the pandemic, starting as a ghost kitchen out of the Q-ZN facility in Saint-Laurent.
“Mezzmiz was born in COVID,” says Hammoud. “Before the pandemic, the plan was a high-end restaurant. Then COVID changed the way people dine, and we started asking a different question: how do you get high-end food to someone at their desk, in a meeting or hosting at home?”
In February 2022, the brand opened at Time Out Market Montréal in the Centre Eaton. At the end of 2023, it left the food hall for its own standalone restaurant on rue Crescent, carrying with it a lesson it still builds around today.
“Time Out Market was our bridge from a ghost kitchen to a real bricks-and-mortar restaurant,” Hammoud notes. “Everyone there has 20 or 30 minutes to eat before heading back to the office, so it forced us to master speed of service. That lesson is now built into how we grow the brand.”
Those lessons guided the search for a Toronto home. The Behar Group represents Mezzmiz on its expansion into Toronto, and broker Grant Nelson and Avi Behar, the firm’s chairman and CEO, toured the brand through a list of spaces before landing at University and Wellington.
“We saw a lot of locations across downtown, and many of them were good opportunities. But none of them felt like Mezzmiz,” Hammoud recalls. “The moment we walked into this space, we knew. It felt like it was meant to be ours.”
GTA Contracting is handling the build, with Toronto restaurant consultancy The Fifteen Group helping Mezzmiz bring the location to life.
“We’ve designed the whole experience around flow: how guests come in, order and get back out,” says Hammoud. “Nobody should spend their lunch break standing in line. Going from Time Out Market to Crescent taught us a lot, and with McGill we turned those lessons into real guidelines for building a fast-casual restaurant around the guest.”
Couriers will be as important as walk-in guests. “Everything we make is designed to travel,” he adds. “We do a tremendous amount of business through Uber Eats, DoorDash and our own website in Montreal, so packaging was never an afterthought. When we open here, people will see how much thought went into getting the food to them properly.”
Speed only matters if the food holds up, and Hammoud is quick to point out that Mezzmiz is no assembly line. The menu leans into Beirut’s cosmopolitan take on Lebanese cooking, and when the brand launched at Time Out Market, it was importing its spices, pomegranate molasses and tahini directly from Lebanon, Time Out Montréal reported. Its core formats, the Mezzbowl, Mezzwich and shareable Mezztray, are built on recipes that take days to prepare.
“People assume fast casual means chopping vegetables and assembling bowls. That’s not what we do,” he says. “Our hummus takes three days to make. Our muhammara takes time. Every item is a recipe, and our menu is a collection of them.”
Protecting that standard while opening Toronto and McGill at the same time is a people challenge. Hammoud’s answer is to promote from within, and Mezzmiz is hiring in Toronto now.
“The people who made Mezzmiz successful are now training the teams for our new locations,” Hammoud explains. “Lebanon is known for its hospitality, and we want that to be contagious, from our staff to every guest. We’re hospitality first, service first, client first. At Mezzmiz, you’ll get fresh, healthy food made by genuine people who truly care about your experience.”
If the lunch rush is one engine for Toronto, corporate catering is the other. It’s familiar ground for Hammoud, and the towers surrounding University and Wellington are full of exactly the clients that keep Mezzmiz busy in Montreal.
“Corporate catering is a huge part of our business, and it’s a segment we’re focused on growing,” Hammoud says. “In Montreal, our mornings are filled with orders from law firms, engineering firms and contractors, whether it’s a cocktail reception, a working lunch or bowls for the whole team. Here, we’re in the heart of the Financial District, surrounded by financial institutions. That’s exactly where we want to be.”
For many office workers downtown, a catered lunch may be their first taste of the brand, long before they discover the storefront around the corner.
Toronto is one piece of a fast-moving plan. Once McGill Street and University Avenue are both open, Mezzmiz will have grown from one restaurant to three, each built to the same footprint of roughly 1,500 square feet. And with a seven to eight week fit-out still ahead here, the next step is already in motion.
“Our real estate advisors are already looking at a second Toronto location,” Hammoud shares. “Of course, we hope Toronto falls for Mezzmiz the way Montreal did. We’re going to give it everything we have, and we’ll open as many locations as we believe the market can handle.”
Launch day will be a family affair. Hammoud credits a supportive wife for making the expansion possible, and his daughter Sama has become a familiar face on the brand’s social channels. “My daughter is a real character,” he laughs. “We’ve made her the Mezzmiz VIP. She walks in, gets her fix and loves every bite. She’ll absolutely be starring in our launch videos.”
Beyond Toronto, the long view is bigger still. In its leasing materials, The Behar Group describes Mezzmiz as on track to become a top quick-serve operator in North America and around the world. The pieces Hammoud described point in that direction: a consistent footprint, design guidelines refined over three openings, and a team that trains its own successors.
“Toronto is an important milestone for us,” Hammoud reflects. “Our ambition is to take Lebanese hospitality far beyond its traditional boundaries, and to build a brand that can travel across cities and cultures without losing what makes it special. Toronto is a very dear next chapter, and we’re just getting started. From Beirut, with love.”
Mezzmiz locations
- 1407 rue Crescent, Montreal (open)
- 495 rue McGill, Montreal (opening soon)
- 55 University Avenue, Toronto (opening soon)
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.