When Mary Anne Catipon launched Tambayan Cafe in Riverview, New Brunswick, she built the bridge that the town was missing: A destination cafe that doubles as a community space. Tambayan Cafe is a reflection of Mary Anne’s lifelong dream of moving to Canada and building a meaningful business. This is a project that was built despite the credential barriers and limited immigration opportunities that Mary Anne encountered along the way. With support from Futurpreneur’s mentorship and startup programming, Tambayan Cafe was a vision that began to take shape.
Named after the Filipino word for “hangout,” Tambayan Cafe reflects how newcomers are not only adapting to life on the East Coast but actively reshaping it through entrepreneurship, culture, and connection.
Mary Anne’s dream of making Canada her home began all the way back in 2012. At the time, she was both newlywed and a first-time mother in the Philippines. While her Canadian dream was present, the immediate responsibilities of achieving financial stability to raise a child came first. Likewise, at the time, she only held a high school diploma and two incomplete years of college. This prevented Mary Anne from pursuing traditional immigration pathways to Canada.
For a decade, Mary Anne worked under temporary contracts in Dubai. However, she knew that her lifestyle came with an expiration date: “If you have work, you can stay, ” explained Mary Anne, “but when your contract ends, you have to go back”. Her dreams of a life abroad led her to explore options across the globe for immigration pathways. She finally secured a letter of acceptance to an Australian school, only to realize she didn’t have the savings to prove she would be able to support her studies and life there.
Still, she did not give up. Mary Anne was determined to secure a better future for her child. This sharpened her old dream of living in Canada back into a concrete goal. She began searching in Canada’s Job Bank, sending CV after CV, hoping an employer might allow her to prove herself. Ultimately, the chance finally showed at her doorstep with an unexpected twist. Although all along it had been Mary Anne, who was applying, it was her husband who was ultimately hired through the Atlantic Immigration Pilot Program, as his education and experience met the formal requirements.
Mary Anne’s family arrived in Saint John as permanent residents in 2019. While the long-held dream had finally materialized, Canada did not provide instant job security. Instead, Mary Anne had to start from scratch, building Canadian experience and credentials to gain a trustworthy professional reputation. She spent years working in the retail and restaurant industry.
The behind-the-counter experience taught her everything from operations to customer care to speed. But Mary Anne did not stop there: “I enrolled myself for business administration in the NBCC to build my knowledge and adapt to the local business environment.” By the time she was ready to begin a cafe of her own, Mary Anne had already spent years developing her ideas into practice in hospitality and management.
It was here when Futurpreneur stepped in as a crucial helping hand in her journey. “Futurpreneur is a great resource for a business startup like mine. They guided me along the way from writing up my business plan until the first day of our operations,” Mary Anne indicated. She cited the mentorship program as one of the most helpful elements of Futurpreneur, where they helped her find a mentor who could meet her needs and goals through a month-long search. Through regular meetings, said mentorship built her abilities to navigate unfamiliar paperwork & make crucial day-to-day operational decisions.
“When I started, I had like 82 pages of a business plan that I submitted to them. They really filtered that down to four pages,” she recalled. “They really helped me understand that in a business plan, you don’t need long explanations—just the straight and direct points: the business side, marketing strategy, pricing, target audience, and competition.” This guidance proved instrumental when she later expanded her business to a second location in Sackville, N.B.
From the early days, Mary Anne knew she wanted her business to have a deeper purpose. She wanted a place where locals could try unique specialty drinks and homemade sweets they couldn’t find anywhere else in Riverview, N.B. Likewise, she wanted a place where her fellow Filipino community could build a sense of home and togetherness.
When it came to designing Tambayan Cafe, Mary Anne envisioned a 2D, black-and-white space where every surface appeared to have jumped to life from a comic book. To pull her visually daring vision, Mary Anne made a post online to ask for artist recommendations. Ji Hyang Ryu, a local Korean artist who was selected for the job, curated every corner to make customers feel like they are inside a drawing. “I pitched the idea to her, told her what I wanted to see on each wall, and then she just made magic,” said Mary Anne.
The interior design of Tambayan Cafe became their most powerful marketing tool; It generated a social media buzz that made passersby curious at first glance. Customers began arriving from all over New Brunswick, telling her they had “seen the cafe on TikTok” and decided to drive two hours or more just to experience it in person. As Mary Anne indicates,” We’re not only serving the Riverview community, but we also attract people to go to Riverview. So basically, we’re putting Riverview on the map. That’s also our main goal because we know Riverview is a town. A small town.”
Tambayans’ menu mirrors the space’s creativity. The cafe is known for its signature items and its reinventions: Croffles, cronuts, different types of croissants, and savoury pastries.”We innovate one base into a variety of flavors,” Mary Anne explained, “We can make a croissant into a breakfast roll”. Mary Anne indicated that, although she might be biased, some of her most popular items are brown sugar or cream cheese bubble tea lattes.
Tambayan Cafe continues growing: Mary Anne has soft-launched a second Tambayan Cafe in Sackville. The expansion reflects not only community demand but the strategic foundation she built with the support of Futurpreneur’s mentorship and programming. Despite the rapid growth, Mary Anne emphasized that the focus remains on building community and creating a unique experience rather than fast, impersonal scaling.
As she reflected on her journey, Mary Anne continued to emphasize the broader value of the Futurpreneur. “The resources and the guidance they provided really made the difference,” she said. Through Futurpreneur, Mary Anne no longer had to spend hours asking everyone she knew for business advice; instead, she could receive direct support from a mentor who understood her business.
Tambayans’ success challenges the idea that newcomer stories are only about sacrifice and hard work.
Mary Anne’s cafe is an expression of joy, hospitality, and creativity that has become a trademark in her community. Ultimately, showing how newcomer-owner businesses can generate tourism, cultural exchange, and pride as opposed to mere economic output.
In Riverview, Tambayan Cafe is a place where newcomers and longtime residents meet halfway: Sharing drinks, space, and a black-and-white photographic backdrop. For Filipino customers, the name offers a familiar warmth and a reminder of home. For others, it is an invitation to experience culture and community in a way that is both accessible and welcoming. As Mary Anne put it, “it’s a place where a community can really connect.”
Through Futurpreneur’s continued support of Mary Anne’s journey, her story becomes proof that the right guidance can transform personal ambition into meaningful community impact.
Inspired by Mary Anne’s success? Start your own business journey with Futurpreneur’s support: futurpreneur.ca/get-started.
