49th Parallel Koolfest Drink

Koolfest is a celebration of exotic cold summer drinks in July and August. It showcases vendors from Vancouver’s Hot Chocolate Festival which happens in winter.

If you want to experience fancy and delicious cool beverages, you’ll want to check out the drinks on offer through Koolfest. The lineup includes milkshakes, chocolate milks, mocha creations, floats and other liquid summer treats!

In this article you’ll find information about the festival including a list of participating locations. We also provide details about two of the cafes we visited, Charisma Cafe & Dessert House in Chinatown and 49th Parallel in North Vancouver.

For the drink series’ official website, visit koolfest.ca.

Koolfest Vancouver Summer Drink Festival

Koolfest is a new summer hot chocolate festival. In 2025 it runs from July 19th until August 10th.

The people behind Koolfest are the same folk behind the Vancouver Hot Chocolate Festival which has been happening for over a dozen years from mid-January until Valentine’s Day. Both festivals feature special drinks from a wide range of participating businesses. During the winter festival the drinks are hot. In summer, however, they are icy cold. In both cases, the beverages are both exotic and delicious. There is nothing plain and ordinary about them.

Neither Koolfest nor the Hot Chocolate Festival are technically “festivals” in that they don’t feature parades, live music, carnival rides, balloons, midways, face painting stations, food trucks, festival fairgrounds or anything like that. Instead, they are simply awesome excuses for people to discover new places and experience heavenly drinks!

With both Koolfest and the Hot Chocolate Festival, dozens of Metro Vancouver-based cafés, ice cream shops, patisseries, chocolatiers and other businesses offer a couple of special drink items each during the festivals. Participating venues represent some of the best coffee shops, bakeries and other specialty food and drink-related retailers in the region.

Although most of the participating vendors have locations somewhere within the City of Vancouver, you’ll find a few in other communities too, including in New Westminster, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam and Richmond as well as on the North Shore. Examples include Bak’d Cookies (in New Westminster), Cassandra Cake Co. (in Port Coquitlam), Doughnut Love (in Coquitlam), Hanoi Drip Coffee (in Richmond), and Catch 122 x Dilemma (in North Vancouver).

Koolfest Vancouver Participating Vendors

Over forty different places are participating in Koolfest in its inaugural year. Well over half are spread out over the City of Vancouver. Neighbourhoods you’ll find Koolfest drink vendors include Gastown, Granville Island, Kitsilano, Yaletown, Mount Pleasant and other parts of town.

In 2025 Vancouver locations participating in Koolfest include 49th Parallel, À La Mode Pie Café, Aiyaohno Cafe, Bar Down Bakery, Beaucoup Bakery & Cafe, Bel Café, Bellaggio Cafe, Boba Run, Boketto Desert Café, The Bunny Cafe, Cadeaux Bakery, Caffe Delish, Casa Mia, Charisma Social Club House, Chocolate Favoris, East Van Roasters, Kafka’s Coffee, La Saison De Patisserie, Ladurée, Little Pisces Taiyaki, Nelson the Seagull Cafe, NUTTEA, Super Veloce, SWEET7 Fruit Tea, Uprising Breads Bakery, and Whisk Matcha x Level V.

In addition to the above, a number of chocolatiers are in Koolfest this year. They include the Drunken Chocolatier, Gem Chocolates, Giovane Caffe, The Good Chocolatier, Kasama Chocolate, and Mink: A Chocolates Cafe. You’ll find a couple of Koolfest drink options at the Vancouver Aquarium too (which is a tourist attraction specializing in live fish as opposed to chocolate).

Some participating vendors have just one location. Others have multiple. Examples of places with more than one location include Caffe Artigiano, Thomas Haas Chocolates, Uno Gelato, 49th Parallel Café & Lucky’s Doughnuts, Bella Gelateria, Crème de la Crumb, Faubourg Bakery, Mercato di Luigi and others.

Below are descriptions of a couple of places we visited during the 2025 Koolfest season. The first one we checked out was Charisma Cafe & Dessert House in Vancouver. The second was 49th Parallel on the North Shore.

Charisma Koolfest Drink — Koolfest Drink at Charisma

Charisma Cafe & Dessert House

The Charisma Cafe is located at 197 Keefer Place in Chinatown. It’s just off Abbot Street, in the roundabout plaza area at the bottom of the steps leading up to the Stadium-Chinatown SkyTrain Station. The cafe is also just a few doors down from the T&T Supermarket.

The Charisma Cafe & Dessert House is a really nice place. They specialize in coffee, but also bubble teas, plus desserts. Their Koolfest specials in 2025 are the Caramero Rocher and Strawberry Oreo-asis. Both are bubble tea milkshakes, wonderfully decadent and come with a Salted Lava Cheese Tart of the Day.

When we visited Charisma we had the Caramero Rocher which is a Ferrero Rocher-inspired drink that’s part milkshake and part bubble tea topped with whipped cream, caramel swirl and nuts. As you can imagine, it was amazing! The tart was really good too!

This cafe is a great place to visit any time of the day, but also late at night. In the summer Charisma is open from 11:00 am until 1:00 am on Thursdays to Sundays and from 5:00 pm to 1:00 am on Mondays to Wednesdays (or from 2:00 pm on stat holidays).

49th Parallel Koolfest Drinks — Drinks & Doughnuts at 49th Parallel

49th Parallel Café & Lucky’s Doughnuts

49th Parallel has four locations and all four are participating in Koolfest this year. The café’s Vancouver locations are at 2198 West 4th Avenue in Kitsilano, 2902 Main Street, and 689 Thurlow Street in downtown Vancouver (just of West Georgia). They also have a location at 93 Lonsdale Avenue near the Shipyards District in North Vancouver (which is where we went for our drinks).

49th Parallel’s Koolfest creations are their S’mores Cold Brew and S’mores Cold Chocolate drinks. Both are topped with a generous layer of delicious marshmallow cold foam, a drizzle of chocolate sauce, and a sprinkling of graham cracker crumbs. The two drinks also come with a chocolate ganache-dipped brioche doughnut topped with a piece of white chocolate S’mores Bark. Both the drinks and the doughnuts are heavenly!

The 49th Parallel Café is famous for the quality of its gourmet, direct-trade coffees. Each location is also where you’ll find Lucky’s Doughnuts which are known as some of the best in the city.

Note: In the summer 49th Parallel is open daily from 8:00 am until either 5:00 or 6:00 pm depending on the location. They stop selling their Koolfest drinks one hour before closing, however, so if you have your heart set on their S’mores Cold Brew or Chocolate specials, don’t wait until the very end of the day.