The Coffee Community

I have wandered into and out of the professional coffee world since 2005 and the one thing that has remained constant throughout all of my experiences is the community of people that gather around coffee and coffee shop culture. There’s a lot of divisiveness in coffee between factory and fast-food types of coffee (we all know which Canadian “icon” I’m referring to here), pseudo third wave specialty franchises (the green monster) and more local, independent coffee shops and roasters like us, but the one thing we ALL share is the communities we create. It’s hard for my ego to reconcile that what we do can share something so integral with those other examples but it is true.

Sociologist Ray Oldenburg wrote about the “third place” in 1989 and its importance to society, and for me, nothing exemplifies this more than the coffee shop. I don’t think there is anywhere else that can bring together people from so many different walks of life and put them in a setting that encourages connection, collaboration and community. At any given time, you can find starving artists, instant ramen eating university students, blue collar workers, philanthropists and millionaire corporate executives all sharing space in a 15-seat coffee shop, finding common ground in the love of coffee and its many variations. I LOVE playing my role in that community so much.

I think if you’ve been into a shop that I work in more than a couple times you may have been subjected to me babbling on and on about something, whether it was coffee, books, the Oilers, or any of a hundred other things I might find interesting in the moment. More than anything else, I love fostering a space where people can come in and feel safe to let their walls down. The world is a really hard place to be in sometimes and so much of our time is spent being a certain way, often at the expense of our true self. The local coffee shop is somewhere you can go to escape that pressure, to read a book, catch up on e-mails, or just sit quietly, people watching, away from the prying eyes of supervisors, co-workers, family, children, partners or anyone else. This doesn’t make you a bad person to need that reprieve, too many people put themselves and their needs at the bottom of an increasingly long list of people to satisfy.

Some of the most important people in my life (including THE most important person), are in my life because of the coffee community. I’ve shared the biggest laughs and the deepest sorrows with them, and all because at the beginning there was a place where we could meet, get to know each other and open up enough to build trust. This is a primary reason I wanted to have our question wall by the coffee bar. I want to start conversations with strangers, I want strangers to discuss answers with other strangers, and maybe eventually we’ll hear stories of people who found each other in our shop, whether that’s good friends, business partners,  life partners, or just an ally in the never-ending battle of life.

Running a coffee business isn’t super complicated, but it’s also not a business you start to get rich. It’s long hours, endless maintenance, constant ordering and the never-ending fear that today is the day everyone will stop coming, but as long as you still come, we’ll still be here, to chat, share stories, be your sounding board, or just be the place with the comfy chair by the window that you stare out of for a minute before or after you have to “life” again. I’m so blessed to be able to come to one of those places everyday as my job, to preside over the place so many people choose as their temporary sanctuary. We ask people every day “what are you grateful for?” and every day I can say the coffee community. (Cheesy, I know, but this is supposed to be a safe space remember!?)

Written by Heath