Montréal’s Café Olimpico celebrates its legacy with the Heritage Tin, a vintage-inspired packaging design by stnmtl capturing Italian craft and community spirit.

If you’ve ever been to Montréal, your must-do list probably looks something like this: bagels from St-Viateur, smoked meat from Schwartz’s, and an espresso from Café Olimpico. Established in 1970 by Italian immigrant Rocco Furfaro, Café Olimpico began as a neighborhood hangout where Rocco and his friends could watch La Liga matches. Over five decades later, it’s become a cultural institution, a place where coffee, community, and conversation blend as seamlessly as the crema on your espresso.

The Mile End café’s charm isn’t just in the coffee. It’s in the atmosphere, the laughter, the walls layered with stories, and that unmistakable warmth that makes even first-time visitors feel like regulars. So the question became: how do you capture that history, that feeling, in an object?

A Tin Steeped in Heritage

Enter stnmtl, the Montréal-based creative studio behind one of their favorite projects to date — the Café Olimpico Heritage Tin. This limited-edition release pays homage to the vintage Italian coffee tins you’d find in every Nonna’s kitchen, a testament to Italian craft, storytelling, and timeless design.

Every detail of the tin is rooted in the café’s architecture and history. The studio drew inspiration from the ornamental ceilings, wood engravings, and interior flourishes that define Olimpico’s space. The result is an intricate, tactile object that feels both nostalgic and new — a collectible piece of design that literally contains the spirit of the café.

“We literally took everything that made the café, and put it in a tin — in traditional Italian fashion,” says the team at stnmtl.

Design Meets Memory

Beyond its beauty, the Heritage Tin is an exercise in storytelling through design. Each curve, emboss, and typographic detail is a celebration of cultural legacy aka Italian roots meeting Montréal soul.

Since its release, the tin has become Café Olimpico’s best-selling product, cherished by both locals and tourists eager to bring a piece of the city, and its coffee culture, home.

Available online and at all four Café Olimpico locations, the tin has quickly become more than packaging. It’s a design object that captures time, place, and community, brewed with care, layered with memory, and sealed with affection.

Design by: stnmtl

Client: Café Olimpico

Photography: Courtesy of stnmtl / Café Olimpico