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On a grey Wednesday in late March, on an evening when snow and freezing rain were predicted, a new kind of event for Ottawa was planned for Art-Is-In bakery in the City Centre building off Scott Street.
“We didn’t know if anyone would come,” said Stephanie Mathieson, co-owner of the bakery and café. “We didn’t advertise the Latte Art Throwdown much — it was mostly word of mouth. There was no pre-registration.”
Soon after the doors opened at 6 p.m., the place turned into part mosh pit, part coffee love-in, as spectators crowded around to the beat of live bands to see which baristas could create the best patterns in the steamed milk floating in cups of coffee.
“The place was packed — you couldn’t move,” says Mathieson. “We maxed out on the number of baristas who could compete, with 32. The turnout was amazing — over 300 people came to watch.”
Chris Petrie, director of retail sales and training for Equator Coffee Roasters and an organizer of the event, says he too was surprised by the turnout, even though he has trained many of the baristas in town.
“I was impressed by how many baristas stepped up and took the challenge.”
Coffee culture — something that has been brewing Down Under and on the West Coast for decades — is at a boil in Ottawa.
Related
Bridgehead, the Ottawa-born chain of fair-trade coffee shops, has opened an average of one new outlet a year since it began in 2000. This year, though, it will go full steam ahead, opening half a dozen new shops, from Kanata to Orléans.
“We had 15 shops in 2015, and will have 22 by next spring,” said Bridgehead founder Tracey Clark. “The pace of growth has increased.”
Morning Owl, which had simmered along with one shop on Rochester Street since 2009, tripled its presence last year, opening a new coffee shop on Bank Street in February and another on Elgin in October. Soon it will expand to six: a Morning Owl will open in a new student residence on Cooper Street within days and, by mid May, the Elgin street pop-up will expand into the space beside it. By summer, another will open in a Kanata luxury apartment development and, next year, another will open in Centretown.
The guys behind Ministry of Coffee, which started on Elgin Street nearly two years ago and who opened a second shop in Hintonburg a year ago, are “in talks about a few more locations,” says Fadi Karam, one of the owners.
And home-grown coffee businesses aren’t the only ones eyeing Ottawa’s fertile grounds.
Good Earth, a Calgary-based chain of franchised fair-trade coffee shops, opened its first shop in Ontario at the Ottawa airport last summer and will open another in Westboro (near the LCBO) in September. A third is planned for Hintonburg late this year or early next.
“We’re planning eight to 10 for Ottawa,” says Gerry Docherty, the company’s COO. “We chose Ottawa as our landing point in Ontario because we feel it has a really great coffee culture that’s been transitioning over the last couple of years to something more sophisticated.”
“I’m just stunned by the explosion,” says Anne Waters, one of Ottawa’s most devoted coffee enthusiasts.
What’s brewing here?
In a way, Waters personifies the shifts that have moved coffee from a freeze-dried fuel in a jar, as her father often drank it, to a passion that’s percolating in neighbourhood coffee shops.
“Coffee was always part of our lives,” recalls Waters. “I distinctly remember going to the A&P as a child and helping pour the beans into the machine — the intoxicating smell as you filled the bag with fresh-ground coffee.”
In her parents’ home, Sunday afternoon coffee was percolated — “I remember being fascinated by the water bubbling up into the glass top,” she says — but her father, a farmer, always also had instant coffee on hand, to use on the go.
By the time she was a newlywed in Ottawa, Waters recalls, coffee was starting to command more attention in home kitchens.
“By the late ’80s my husband and I were well into fussing over a pot of coffee. Coffee had become part of food culture.”
In 2001, they bought their first espresso machine; four years later, their first bean grinder.
But at work, at a large downtown financial services company, coffee was still very much a fast-food commodity.
“It was a buck a cup,” says Waters. “You’d have four or five a day, something you’d get for meetings, and you wouldn’t want to spend more than $1 a cup.”
When Starbucks came to town in the mid ’90s, Waters says at first she didn’t get it.
“I couldn’t fathom the pricing. I just thought ‘Whoa … how do you stay in business with prices like that?’
“And so began the next wave of coffee. Before, you certainly would never talk about where the bean comes from.”
Fast forward to 2016: Waters drinks Starbucks only when she has no better options (“for me, the coffee experience changed when they switched from manual to automatic machines”), she knows her favourite baristas by name, and Instagrams most of the cups of coffee she consumes. She keeps a continually updated list, on Tumblr, of her favourite independent coffee shops in and around Ottawa. And she doesn’t hesitate to spend $3 to $4 for a well-made Flat White, which is way smaller than those $1 cups of brew she used to consume.
Chris Petrie is the Director of Retail Sales and Training at Equator Coffee in Westboro.
“I think everyone’s getting a little bit smarter about coffee,” says Equator’s Petrie, and one of Waters’ favourite baristas. “People travel a lot and learn about what’s out there. We all want the finer things — look at the craft brew market in Ottawa.”
Mathieson, who worked as a sommelier in such top Ottawa spots as Café Henry Burger and Signatures at Le Cordon Bleu before joining forces with her baker husband Kevin to open Art-Is-In, likens today’s coffee culture to where wine appreciation was about 20 years ago.
“That struck me in 2007 when Kevin and I travelled out west, to Portland and Seattle. We loved coffee, but we were kind of stuck in ‘the stronger it is, the darker, the better.’
“We were flabbergasted by the coffee culture out there. Like with wine, it was ‘do you want to choose your beans?’ and describing the flavours as ‘notes of strawberry and caramel.’ People wanted to take courses to learn more.”
Jeff Hopkins, an associate professor at the University of Western Ontario with interests in cultural geography and public spaces, muses that today’s coffee culture is part of a shift toward a desire for authenticity.
“Coffee is a post-colonial beverage. It comes from someplace else and it was introduced by The Man to get us to work harder. It’s an acceptable drug.
“In the 1950s, everything was instant, powdered coffee and powdered cream. Now we want a return to authenticity — real coffee, fair trade, integrated and we want to meet the grower, roast the bean. In the age of mass consumerism, if you can specialize, you can stand out.”
Oddly enough for a beverage that’s consumed for its stimulating caffeine, coffee also seems to be seen an antidote to stressed, overly connected lives.
“I think that the energy is not necessarily from the caffeine,” says Ministry of Coffee manager Adam Gallaro. “It’s from the enjoyment. It’s that perfect moment in your day.”
Anne Waters says she won’t buy coffee in a disposable cup if she can help it. Her mantra is: “Always for here — never to go.”
“Some of it is paying homage to the value of taking a break in your day and saying that the world’s busy-ness doesn’t own you.”
Hopkins credits the TV show Friends for putting the coffee shop with a sofa in the minds of consumers.
“There is a longing to interact and a coffee shop is a great third place, after your home and workplace or school. Since the Second World War, we’ve seen a dearth of those public meeting spaces. Churches are no longer central to most people. The shopping mall was dominant in the ’80s and ’90s, but many have closed or tanked, and been replaced by big box stores and online shopping.
“Can you name five places where you can see and be seen? Coffee places have been that place for centuries.”
He says there is not just one coffee culture, but several.
“For some people, it’s conspicuous consumption. There’s the hipster element, but also the anti-hipster. Tim Hortons has done a good job with its ads promoting an image of hockey and patriotism. Other people would never go to Tim Hortons. They insist on the independent and the barista with a man bun.”
It seems that Ottawa, with high income and education levels and an advanced food and craft-beer scene, was primed for coffee culture by the time Bridgehead opened its own roastery, with leather armchairs, off Preston Street nearly four years ago.
“I think the coffee culture in Ottawa is thanks to Bridgehead,” says Tommy Chan, manager at Elgin Street’s Morning Owl and considered one of Ottawa’s most talented baristas. “Ever since they started doing a good job roasting their own beans at the Roastery, and educating people — they even have a cupping room — people want to continue this trend.”
Bridgehead’s director of coffee, Ian Clark, who started as a barista in 2002 when he was a university student, has now been a judge at three world barista championships and was the second person in Canada to become a certified coffee judge — called a Q grader — through the international Coffee Quality Institute.
“We’ve brought those standards to Ottawa,” says Clark (no relation to founder Tracey), who has been responsible for the training of most of the 300 baristas who now work for Bridgehead. He also travels the world, sourcing the best coffees he can find.
Equator’s Petrie — who has his own barista-training company called Chris-P — has trained many of the other baristas in town, bringing with him 10 years of experience in Australia’s well-developed coffee industry.
“When I first took a barista course in Sydney and they said you need at least three years’ experience to get hired, I laughed,” says the father of two. “It was only after working for three to four years that I understood. I was still learning after nine years. I learned so much when I was down there. I wanted the opportunity to share what I had learned with my home city.”
Petrie says that during his 13 years away, “when I came back home to Ottawa to visit, I’d be disappointed, because I was used to such a high standard.
“Even when I moved back in 2013, I looked at what was happening in Ottawa — there was Tim Hortons, Starbucks, Bridgehead and few independents. There wasn’t a great coffee community like in Sydney.”
He said that has changed in just the last couple of years.
“The coffee scene here has grown massively. Every time a new independent coffee shop opens up and it does well, it inspires someone else. Just look at all the ones that have opened in the last year or so … Morning Owl, Green Rebel, Alice’s Village Café in Carp, Red Door Provisions, Café British in Aylmer … the new Alt Le Germain hotel downtown. We’ve got a lot of people here now who are trying to push it.”
Ian Clark is the director of coffee for Bridgehead.
Back at Bridgehead, Tracey and Ian Clark say they are thrilled with all the new competition.
“Getting a lot of new independent coffee shops is exciting because it’s triggered more interest in coffee,” says Tracey Clark. “The more voices there are saying ‘hey, this coffee was really interesting tasting’, the better it is for us and everyone else on the local scene — and the growers.”
For Bridgehead — a company that was started by two United Church ministers and that was once run by Oxfam — the whole point is to improve the livelihoods of Third World growers. The more sophisticated the coffee-drinking public is — and the more people are willing to pay for a cup of coffee — the easier that job is.
“Right now, the market price for average coffee is below the cost of production,” notes Ian Clark. “At times like this, the only producers making a profit are those who are participating in high-quality coffees, premium fair-trade and organic ones.”
He and founder Tracey talk proudly of the roasters Bridgehead has helped finance for coffee-growing communities in Uganda, Peru and Guatemala, and even about one grower who has gone from a subsistence living to taking selfies at the Eiffel Tower.
And while more latte throwdowns are planned to showcase and celebrate Ottawa’s burgeoning coffee culture, the espresso-based beverages with steamed milk on top are not where coffee is headed.
As New York Times coffee columnist Oliver Strand has said, “If you start to nerd out on coffee, you stop getting lattes because you realize it’s not about the coffee, it’s about the milk.”
The hottest drink at the coffee counter now is the Pour Over, an individually made drip coffee that takes about five minutes to brew and that’s all about tasting the nuances of a fine, carefully sourced, coffee.
Bridgehead plans to introduce new Pour Overs using Kalita brewers and Modbar fixtures in the first week of May at its Preston Street roastery and its three latest locations: Carling at Fairlawn, on Innes Road in Orléans and on Ogilvie near Gloucester Centre.
Bridgehead isn’t alone or the first in town to offer Pour Overs, or to deal directly with farmers, offering more than fair-trade recompense. Equator has been rooted in social enterprise since it began in the late 1990s, for example, while Ministry of Coffee deals with a dozen roasteries that in turn trade directly with growers.
“It’s the future,” says Ministry of Coffee’s Gallaro. “With direct trade, when you’re in a relationship with the farmer, the level of coffee comes up even higher to a luxury grade.”
Bridgehead plans to start using the Pour Over as way to highlight crops of coffee so small, they could never be put on the regular rotation.
“By introducing the Pour Over, we’ll be able to offer, for the first time, coffees from individual farms with very limited production,” says Ian Clark. “This is the next exciting thing. We’ll be able to celebrate individual lots from single producers. Instead of growing areas the size of Confederation Park, we’re talking about coffee grown on an area the size of a coffee shop.”
At Bridgehead, small cups of coffee from such micro-lots will probably sell for $4 to $5, compared to $1.90 for its regular, small, fair-trade brewed coffees. This is something to celebrate, says Tracey Clark.
“This quality piece is what it’s all about. People will be able to appreciate the varietals, the methods, the impact of altitude, as with fine wines. And we’ll be able to put more money in the pockets of subsistence farmers.”
Blended businesses: coffee shops with bikes, blooms or books on the side
Blended businesses — coffee shops that double as everything from florists and bike shops to bars and bookstores — are popping up all over the Ottawa area. Here’s a sampling:
Blumen Studio, 465 Parkdale Ave.: “We’re a flower store first, but really busy as a café as well,” says owner Kat Kosk, who has an Italian espresso machine and offers Chemex Pour Overs as well as bouquets and potted plants. “It’s crazy in the last five to six years the attention to detail that people pay to their coffee.”
WAG, 1071 Bank St.: This bustling business in Old Ottawa South is billed as “a posh shop for spoiled pets — and home of the doggin’ it café.” You can treat Fido to a gourmet beef bone while you enjoy a caramel macchiato.
Cyclelogik, 1111A Wellington St. W.: Hintonburg shop, which offers Cervelo, Scott and Felt bicycles, tires, cycling clothes and indoor cycling classes, advertises that it’s powered by caffeine — step up to the bar for latte or a cappuccino.
Common Concept Shop, 380 Elgin St.: In May, the Morning Owl pop-up in the cool new clothing store above El Camino and Datsun will expand into bigger digs and add food and liquor, but still be connected to the space that combines clothing shop, hair salon and coffee shop in one.
Ministry of Coffee and Social Affairs, 1013 Wellington St. W.: Unlike the nearly three-year-old Elgin Street Ministry of Coffee, which is strictly a coffee shop, the Hintonburg edition, which opened a year ago, gets a whole new persona after dark. “The lights dim, the music comes up, bartenders replace baristas and a kitchen staff comes in,” says owner Fadi Karam. “It transitions from a coffee shop to a large bar.”
Siberian Cat Café, 205 Old Chelsea Rd.: Sip on rare coffee made from beans seasoned with sea water on the Îles de la Madeleine while you enjoy the company of the owners’ seven Siberian cats at this business that opened in Old Chelsea less than a year ago.
Bread By Us, 1065 Wellington St. W.: Billed as an “Artisan Bakery & Espresso Bar,” you can get loaves of fresh-baked bread, pastries and focaccia, but also cortados, hazelnut lattes and Chemex Pour Overs.
Black Squirrel Books & Café, 1073 Bank St., Old Ottawa South: Browse among new and used books while you sip on an Americano, cold brew Ethiopian coffee or — once renovations are complete — even a cocktail. “Sometimes books are busier, sometimes it’s the café,” says co-owner Steven Wong. “It makes for a resilient business.”
Origin Trade, 111 York St.: Open since just before Christmas in a brick house in the ByWard Market, like Hintonburg’s Ministry of Coffee, this coffee shop has split personality. “At about 5 or 6 p.m. we dim the lights, put candles out and transition to a lounge atmosphere,” says assistant manager Rebecca Damiano. “The owners say this is a trend that’s really big in Toronto and New York.” The rumour is that a new Starbucks Evening will open across the street from Origin Trade, in the former Fat Tuesdays building. Three of these new liquor-licensed versions of Starbucks opened in Toronto on April 5. Bridgehead has been serving beer and wine at some of its coffee shops since September.
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“We didn’t know if anyone would come,” said Stephanie Mathieson, co-owner of the bakery and café. “We didn’t advertise the Latte Art Throwdown much — it was mostly word of mouth. There was no pre-registration.”
Soon after the doors opened at 6 p.m., the place turned into part mosh pit, part coffee love-in, as spectators crowded around to the beat of live bands to see which baristas could create the best patterns in the steamed milk floating in cups of coffee.
“The place was packed — you couldn’t move,” says Mathieson. “We maxed out on the number of baristas who could compete, with 32. The turnout was amazing — over 300 people came to watch.”
Chris Petrie, director of retail sales and training for Equator Coffee Roasters and an organizer of the event, says he too was surprised by the turnout, even though he has trained many of the baristas in town.
“I was impressed by how many baristas stepped up and took the challenge.”
Coffee culture — something that has been brewing Down Under and on the West Coast for decades — is at a boil in Ottawa.
Related
- Coffee: Four baristas with mojo
- Blended businesses: coffee shops with bikes, blooms or books on the side
- A coffee enthusiast's top picks
- Coffee talk: what's a ristretto?
Bridgehead, the Ottawa-born chain of fair-trade coffee shops, has opened an average of one new outlet a year since it began in 2000. This year, though, it will go full steam ahead, opening half a dozen new shops, from Kanata to Orléans.
“We had 15 shops in 2015, and will have 22 by next spring,” said Bridgehead founder Tracey Clark. “The pace of growth has increased.”
Morning Owl, which had simmered along with one shop on Rochester Street since 2009, tripled its presence last year, opening a new coffee shop on Bank Street in February and another on Elgin in October. Soon it will expand to six: a Morning Owl will open in a new student residence on Cooper Street within days and, by mid May, the Elgin street pop-up will expand into the space beside it. By summer, another will open in a Kanata luxury apartment development and, next year, another will open in Centretown.
The guys behind Ministry of Coffee, which started on Elgin Street nearly two years ago and who opened a second shop in Hintonburg a year ago, are “in talks about a few more locations,” says Fadi Karam, one of the owners.
And home-grown coffee businesses aren’t the only ones eyeing Ottawa’s fertile grounds.
Good Earth, a Calgary-based chain of franchised fair-trade coffee shops, opened its first shop in Ontario at the Ottawa airport last summer and will open another in Westboro (near the LCBO) in September. A third is planned for Hintonburg late this year or early next.
“We’re planning eight to 10 for Ottawa,” says Gerry Docherty, the company’s COO. “We chose Ottawa as our landing point in Ontario because we feel it has a really great coffee culture that’s been transitioning over the last couple of years to something more sophisticated.”
“I’m just stunned by the explosion,” says Anne Waters, one of Ottawa’s most devoted coffee enthusiasts.
What’s brewing here?
In a way, Waters personifies the shifts that have moved coffee from a freeze-dried fuel in a jar, as her father often drank it, to a passion that’s percolating in neighbourhood coffee shops.
“Coffee was always part of our lives,” recalls Waters. “I distinctly remember going to the A&P as a child and helping pour the beans into the machine — the intoxicating smell as you filled the bag with fresh-ground coffee.”
In her parents’ home, Sunday afternoon coffee was percolated — “I remember being fascinated by the water bubbling up into the glass top,” she says — but her father, a farmer, always also had instant coffee on hand, to use on the go.
By the time she was a newlywed in Ottawa, Waters recalls, coffee was starting to command more attention in home kitchens.
“By the late ’80s my husband and I were well into fussing over a pot of coffee. Coffee had become part of food culture.”
In 2001, they bought their first espresso machine; four years later, their first bean grinder.
But at work, at a large downtown financial services company, coffee was still very much a fast-food commodity.
“It was a buck a cup,” says Waters. “You’d have four or five a day, something you’d get for meetings, and you wouldn’t want to spend more than $1 a cup.”
When Starbucks came to town in the mid ’90s, Waters says at first she didn’t get it.
“I couldn’t fathom the pricing. I just thought ‘Whoa … how do you stay in business with prices like that?’
“And so began the next wave of coffee. Before, you certainly would never talk about where the bean comes from.”
Fast forward to 2016: Waters drinks Starbucks only when she has no better options (“for me, the coffee experience changed when they switched from manual to automatic machines”), she knows her favourite baristas by name, and Instagrams most of the cups of coffee she consumes. She keeps a continually updated list, on Tumblr, of her favourite independent coffee shops in and around Ottawa. And she doesn’t hesitate to spend $3 to $4 for a well-made Flat White, which is way smaller than those $1 cups of brew she used to consume.
Chris Petrie is the Director of Retail Sales and Training at Equator Coffee in Westboro.
“I think everyone’s getting a little bit smarter about coffee,” says Equator’s Petrie, and one of Waters’ favourite baristas. “People travel a lot and learn about what’s out there. We all want the finer things — look at the craft brew market in Ottawa.”
Mathieson, who worked as a sommelier in such top Ottawa spots as Café Henry Burger and Signatures at Le Cordon Bleu before joining forces with her baker husband Kevin to open Art-Is-In, likens today’s coffee culture to where wine appreciation was about 20 years ago.
“That struck me in 2007 when Kevin and I travelled out west, to Portland and Seattle. We loved coffee, but we were kind of stuck in ‘the stronger it is, the darker, the better.’
“We were flabbergasted by the coffee culture out there. Like with wine, it was ‘do you want to choose your beans?’ and describing the flavours as ‘notes of strawberry and caramel.’ People wanted to take courses to learn more.”
Jeff Hopkins, an associate professor at the University of Western Ontario with interests in cultural geography and public spaces, muses that today’s coffee culture is part of a shift toward a desire for authenticity.
“Coffee is a post-colonial beverage. It comes from someplace else and it was introduced by The Man to get us to work harder. It’s an acceptable drug.
“In the 1950s, everything was instant, powdered coffee and powdered cream. Now we want a return to authenticity — real coffee, fair trade, integrated and we want to meet the grower, roast the bean. In the age of mass consumerism, if you can specialize, you can stand out.”
Oddly enough for a beverage that’s consumed for its stimulating caffeine, coffee also seems to be seen an antidote to stressed, overly connected lives.
“I think that the energy is not necessarily from the caffeine,” says Ministry of Coffee manager Adam Gallaro. “It’s from the enjoyment. It’s that perfect moment in your day.”
Anne Waters says she won’t buy coffee in a disposable cup if she can help it. Her mantra is: “Always for here — never to go.”
“Some of it is paying homage to the value of taking a break in your day and saying that the world’s busy-ness doesn’t own you.”
Hopkins credits the TV show Friends for putting the coffee shop with a sofa in the minds of consumers.
“There is a longing to interact and a coffee shop is a great third place, after your home and workplace or school. Since the Second World War, we’ve seen a dearth of those public meeting spaces. Churches are no longer central to most people. The shopping mall was dominant in the ’80s and ’90s, but many have closed or tanked, and been replaced by big box stores and online shopping.
“Can you name five places where you can see and be seen? Coffee places have been that place for centuries.”
He says there is not just one coffee culture, but several.
“For some people, it’s conspicuous consumption. There’s the hipster element, but also the anti-hipster. Tim Hortons has done a good job with its ads promoting an image of hockey and patriotism. Other people would never go to Tim Hortons. They insist on the independent and the barista with a man bun.”
It seems that Ottawa, with high income and education levels and an advanced food and craft-beer scene, was primed for coffee culture by the time Bridgehead opened its own roastery, with leather armchairs, off Preston Street nearly four years ago.
“I think the coffee culture in Ottawa is thanks to Bridgehead,” says Tommy Chan, manager at Elgin Street’s Morning Owl and considered one of Ottawa’s most talented baristas. “Ever since they started doing a good job roasting their own beans at the Roastery, and educating people — they even have a cupping room — people want to continue this trend.”
Bridgehead’s director of coffee, Ian Clark, who started as a barista in 2002 when he was a university student, has now been a judge at three world barista championships and was the second person in Canada to become a certified coffee judge — called a Q grader — through the international Coffee Quality Institute.
“We’ve brought those standards to Ottawa,” says Clark (no relation to founder Tracey), who has been responsible for the training of most of the 300 baristas who now work for Bridgehead. He also travels the world, sourcing the best coffees he can find.
Equator’s Petrie — who has his own barista-training company called Chris-P — has trained many of the other baristas in town, bringing with him 10 years of experience in Australia’s well-developed coffee industry.
“When I first took a barista course in Sydney and they said you need at least three years’ experience to get hired, I laughed,” says the father of two. “It was only after working for three to four years that I understood. I was still learning after nine years. I learned so much when I was down there. I wanted the opportunity to share what I had learned with my home city.”
Petrie says that during his 13 years away, “when I came back home to Ottawa to visit, I’d be disappointed, because I was used to such a high standard.
“Even when I moved back in 2013, I looked at what was happening in Ottawa — there was Tim Hortons, Starbucks, Bridgehead and few independents. There wasn’t a great coffee community like in Sydney.”
He said that has changed in just the last couple of years.
“The coffee scene here has grown massively. Every time a new independent coffee shop opens up and it does well, it inspires someone else. Just look at all the ones that have opened in the last year or so … Morning Owl, Green Rebel, Alice’s Village Café in Carp, Red Door Provisions, Café British in Aylmer … the new Alt Le Germain hotel downtown. We’ve got a lot of people here now who are trying to push it.”
Ian Clark is the director of coffee for Bridgehead.
Back at Bridgehead, Tracey and Ian Clark say they are thrilled with all the new competition.
“Getting a lot of new independent coffee shops is exciting because it’s triggered more interest in coffee,” says Tracey Clark. “The more voices there are saying ‘hey, this coffee was really interesting tasting’, the better it is for us and everyone else on the local scene — and the growers.”
For Bridgehead — a company that was started by two United Church ministers and that was once run by Oxfam — the whole point is to improve the livelihoods of Third World growers. The more sophisticated the coffee-drinking public is — and the more people are willing to pay for a cup of coffee — the easier that job is.
“Right now, the market price for average coffee is below the cost of production,” notes Ian Clark. “At times like this, the only producers making a profit are those who are participating in high-quality coffees, premium fair-trade and organic ones.”
He and founder Tracey talk proudly of the roasters Bridgehead has helped finance for coffee-growing communities in Uganda, Peru and Guatemala, and even about one grower who has gone from a subsistence living to taking selfies at the Eiffel Tower.
And while more latte throwdowns are planned to showcase and celebrate Ottawa’s burgeoning coffee culture, the espresso-based beverages with steamed milk on top are not where coffee is headed.
As New York Times coffee columnist Oliver Strand has said, “If you start to nerd out on coffee, you stop getting lattes because you realize it’s not about the coffee, it’s about the milk.”
The hottest drink at the coffee counter now is the Pour Over, an individually made drip coffee that takes about five minutes to brew and that’s all about tasting the nuances of a fine, carefully sourced, coffee.
Bridgehead plans to introduce new Pour Overs using Kalita brewers and Modbar fixtures in the first week of May at its Preston Street roastery and its three latest locations: Carling at Fairlawn, on Innes Road in Orléans and on Ogilvie near Gloucester Centre.
Bridgehead isn’t alone or the first in town to offer Pour Overs, or to deal directly with farmers, offering more than fair-trade recompense. Equator has been rooted in social enterprise since it began in the late 1990s, for example, while Ministry of Coffee deals with a dozen roasteries that in turn trade directly with growers.
“It’s the future,” says Ministry of Coffee’s Gallaro. “With direct trade, when you’re in a relationship with the farmer, the level of coffee comes up even higher to a luxury grade.”
Bridgehead plans to start using the Pour Over as way to highlight crops of coffee so small, they could never be put on the regular rotation.
“By introducing the Pour Over, we’ll be able to offer, for the first time, coffees from individual farms with very limited production,” says Ian Clark. “This is the next exciting thing. We’ll be able to celebrate individual lots from single producers. Instead of growing areas the size of Confederation Park, we’re talking about coffee grown on an area the size of a coffee shop.”
At Bridgehead, small cups of coffee from such micro-lots will probably sell for $4 to $5, compared to $1.90 for its regular, small, fair-trade brewed coffees. This is something to celebrate, says Tracey Clark.
“This quality piece is what it’s all about. People will be able to appreciate the varietals, the methods, the impact of altitude, as with fine wines. And we’ll be able to put more money in the pockets of subsistence farmers.”
Blended businesses: coffee shops with bikes, blooms or books on the side
Blended businesses — coffee shops that double as everything from florists and bike shops to bars and bookstores — are popping up all over the Ottawa area. Here’s a sampling:
Blumen Studio, 465 Parkdale Ave.: “We’re a flower store first, but really busy as a café as well,” says owner Kat Kosk, who has an Italian espresso machine and offers Chemex Pour Overs as well as bouquets and potted plants. “It’s crazy in the last five to six years the attention to detail that people pay to their coffee.”
WAG, 1071 Bank St.: This bustling business in Old Ottawa South is billed as “a posh shop for spoiled pets — and home of the doggin’ it café.” You can treat Fido to a gourmet beef bone while you enjoy a caramel macchiato.
Cyclelogik, 1111A Wellington St. W.: Hintonburg shop, which offers Cervelo, Scott and Felt bicycles, tires, cycling clothes and indoor cycling classes, advertises that it’s powered by caffeine — step up to the bar for latte or a cappuccino.
Common Concept Shop, 380 Elgin St.: In May, the Morning Owl pop-up in the cool new clothing store above El Camino and Datsun will expand into bigger digs and add food and liquor, but still be connected to the space that combines clothing shop, hair salon and coffee shop in one.
Ministry of Coffee and Social Affairs, 1013 Wellington St. W.: Unlike the nearly three-year-old Elgin Street Ministry of Coffee, which is strictly a coffee shop, the Hintonburg edition, which opened a year ago, gets a whole new persona after dark. “The lights dim, the music comes up, bartenders replace baristas and a kitchen staff comes in,” says owner Fadi Karam. “It transitions from a coffee shop to a large bar.”
Siberian Cat Café, 205 Old Chelsea Rd.: Sip on rare coffee made from beans seasoned with sea water on the Îles de la Madeleine while you enjoy the company of the owners’ seven Siberian cats at this business that opened in Old Chelsea less than a year ago.
Bread By Us, 1065 Wellington St. W.: Billed as an “Artisan Bakery & Espresso Bar,” you can get loaves of fresh-baked bread, pastries and focaccia, but also cortados, hazelnut lattes and Chemex Pour Overs.
Black Squirrel Books & Café, 1073 Bank St., Old Ottawa South: Browse among new and used books while you sip on an Americano, cold brew Ethiopian coffee or — once renovations are complete — even a cocktail. “Sometimes books are busier, sometimes it’s the café,” says co-owner Steven Wong. “It makes for a resilient business.”
Origin Trade, 111 York St.: Open since just before Christmas in a brick house in the ByWard Market, like Hintonburg’s Ministry of Coffee, this coffee shop has split personality. “At about 5 or 6 p.m. we dim the lights, put candles out and transition to a lounge atmosphere,” says assistant manager Rebecca Damiano. “The owners say this is a trend that’s really big in Toronto and New York.” The rumour is that a new Starbucks Evening will open across the street from Origin Trade, in the former Fat Tuesdays building. Three of these new liquor-licensed versions of Starbucks opened in Toronto on April 5. Bridgehead has been serving beer and wine at some of its coffee shops since September.
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