The Fig: The Downtown Vernon Café a Son Bought for His Mom

Some businesses start with a spreadsheet. The Fig started with a promise made by a 13-year-old boy.

David Scarlatescu was that age when his mom, Beatrice, first brought him through the doors of a little downtown Vernon café and said something that never left him: “David, I don’t know how, but one day I want to own this place.” Most kids would have finished their sandwich and forgotten it. David didn’t. He carried those words through part-time jobs, full-time jobs, and years of saving — and in August 2017, at just 19 years old, he bought The Fig for his mom. This is the story of a Vernon café built on family, kept alive by its community, and still serving the same fresh, honest food that made someone fall in love with it in the first place.

A Promise Made at Thirteen

Picture it. A mom and her teenage son, sitting in a warm little café on a Vernon morning, and a wish spoken out loud that sounds impossible at the time. That’s where The Fig’s story really begins — not with David, but with Beatrice, and a dream she said out loud to the one person who decided to make it real.

“That stuck with me,” David says of that moment. He worked with a single goal in sight, the way few people ever do, and turned his mom’s offhand wish into a plan. Buying the business, in his words, was “a way to thank her for always believing in me, and to build something special together.” In a downtown Vernon full of good coffee and good intentions, that kind of origin story is rare — and you can taste the difference when a place is run by someone who chose it on purpose.

“When I was 13, my mom brought me into The Fig and told me one day she wanted to own this place. At 19, I bought it for her.”— David Scarlatescu, owner of The Fig

Buying the Dream at Nineteen

Nineteen is the age most people are figuring out a class schedule. David was signing for a beloved Vernon institution.

He calls the years since “a whirlwind,” and it’s easy to see why. Taking over a downtown café that regulars already loved meant learning everything fast — building a team, running the numbers, and reimagining quick-service food around fresh, local ingredients without losing the warmth people came for. Then a pandemic hit, and The Fig kept going with curbside and no-contact pickup, holding onto its regulars through the hardest stretch a small restaurant can face. Through all of it, David says, they kept “our personal touch and our community close the whole way.” Beating those odds at that age isn’t luck. It’s the promise doing its work.

Fast Food, Reimagined as Real Food

The Fig’s guiding principle fits on a single line: “Healthy Food, Made Fast.” What that means in practice is a small rebellion against what “fast food” usually stands for.

Here, quick doesn’t mean frozen. The team treats fast food like real food — fresh, local, and made in-house wherever they can, from the soups to the baked goods. It’s the reason the café sits at 4.5 stars across nearly a hundred reviews and ranks among the top quick bites in Vernon. But David is quick to say the food isn’t even the thing that sets them apart. “We know our regulars by name, we genuinely care about every customer, and we’ve held onto that small-business warmth even as we’ve grown.” In a world of self-order kiosks, a café in downtown Vernon that still remembers your usual is worth driving across town for.

The Regulars Who Make It Home

Ask David for his favourite part of the job and he doesn’t mention revenue or reviews. He talks about the seniors.

“We have our senior regulars that come for coffee every morning,” he says. “It’s great to hear their stories and chat with them.” That’s the quiet magic of a real neighbourhood café — it becomes a living room for the community around it. The Fig is the kind of downtown Vernon spot where the same faces appear at the same tables, where a morning coffee comes with a conversation, and where being known matters as much as being fed. When David says “Vernon raised me,” you understand the café is simply how he’s raising the town back.

From the Counter to the Whole Community

The Fig doesn’t stay behind its counter. It shows up where Vernon gathers.

Alongside the daily breakfast and lunch crowd, David has grown a catering side that brings The Fig to weddings, business lunches, private functions, and school lunches — gatherings anywhere from 6 to 100 people. The café sources local ingredients and makes as much as it can in-house, so a catered Fig spread tastes like the café itself, just bigger. It’s run day to day by manager Kayla Pasciullo and a tight-knit team who share one belief: that quick-service food can be fresh, honest, and made with care. For a Vernon business owner planning an event, catering that already knows the community is a rare kind of easy.

“Vernon raised me. Being local means we build real relationships, not just transactions, with the people we serve every day.”— David Scarlatescu

What’s Next for The Fig

Nine years in, David still eats the food every single day — his own favourite fun fact, and the best endorsement a café owner can give.

Looking ahead, the plan is to keep growing the catering, deepen The Fig’s roots in Vernon, and keep changing the way people think about quick, healthy food. What he’s most excited about is beautifully simple: “Welcoming more of the community through our doors and building on everything we’ve created since 2017.” A promise made at 13, kept at 19, and still being served fresh every morning on 30th Avenue — that’s the kind of local story downtown Vernon is lucky to have.

Behind every storefront on 30th Avenue is a story, and The Fig’s is one of the good ones — a mom’s dream, a son’s promise, and a café that turned both into breakfast. Vernon is full of businesses started by people who love this valley. The Fig is proof of what happens when someone loves it enough to keep a promise.

Next time you’re downtown, skip the drive-thru. Walk into The Fig, order the soup and sandwich, grab a cappuccino shortbread cookie for the road, and say hi to David and the team. Supporting a place like this is how a downtown stays alive — one fresh, local, friendly morning at a time.