There's a tiny little coffee shop in Calgary with two walls made of glass and a consistent collection of interesting patrons.
A third of the floor space of this tiny shop is taken up by a real-fire coffee roasting machine. There are few things more magical than the moment when the roaster reaches that point in the process where he releases a plume of delicious-smelling smoke into the sunbeams to dance and enchant any viewer clever enough to be paying attention to the visual and scentual extravaganza.
Another third of the space is taken up by the barista bar. Baristas here are university students, world travellers, artists, technical wizards, philosophers. The baristas know each other and the patrons and mostly have, for ages. Conversation is likely to be quirky, brainy, interesting, free-flowing, passionate.
The patrons, too, are quirky, interesting, world travellers, philosophers, students, neighbours. This is one of the very few coffee shops in Calgary where you can walk in and join the chat. There's an easy, friendly, relaxed vibe that's all too often absent in this glitzy, moneyed town.
The location is in Kensington, next door to downtown. You'll find the odd patron wearing a business suit, though you're more likely to find long skirts, funky sweaters, backpacks, student clothing. No-one looks out of place. No-one feels out of place.
I admire the owners of this shop for so many reasons. There are so many things they do right, but the first and foremost is that welcome. It's not everyone who can create the feeling that all are welcome here. And of course, I love the coffee. The business has been providing local residents with the best coffee in the city for three decades.
No electricity, computerized temperature gauges, or modern gadgets are needed for the exquisite artistry of flavour achieved here with the widest variety of beans you'll see almost anywhere.
The beans arrive green from all over the world -- Yemen, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ethiopia... everywhere that coffee grows. Lech, the owner, can tell you stories about many of the suppliers and their methods, from the straw-woven bags certain countries used to use, to gravel added to increase the weight of bags from certain other producers ("the coffee was so good, though, we'd just smile and know you have to put up with that," he says).
Over the decades, the coffee artists at the Roasterie have adventurously sought out the highest quality providers. For example, they got in on the wave when civet-poop coffee was discovered. The reason it was of such high quality, says Lech, is that the civets routinely chose the perfectly ripe berries in the wild. However, the quality decreased when greedy suppliers tried to cage the civets. Caged, they couldn't choose the highest quality coffee berries, so the product was not at all the same.
The Roasterie switched to another craze that comes around but once a year -- bird-poop coffee. It will sell this season for two hundred and fifty dollars a pound.
They could sell it for a lot more, because there will only be about thirty pounds of it, and they have a surfeit of wealthy customers clamouring for the product. But no. Lech plans to sell the coffee in quarter-pound bags only, to make sure that every customer who wants to buy some will get a chance.
No matter where they're from or how they get to the Roasterie, when the beans arrive they are lovingly, perfectly roasted to perfection right inside the small cafe.
Typically when an artist achieves perfection in this city, plumped up with oil money, gloss follows. The price of their product rises; money rolls in. Their premises change, as if expensive surroundings will coax consumers to spend more money. The Roasterie hasn't suffered that fate. They don't clamour or claw for fame. They don't increase their prices to match their popularity. They don't renovate their premises to show the high-class consumers what a benefit it would be to walk through the door.
No, they keep their battered stools, their second-hand tables, because they're comfortable, and they have more heart and spirit than brand new ones could. They welcome their patrons in suits and rags alike -- and those patrons talk easily to each other here, as they never would in any other downtown cafe. The advertising campaigns here are no different than it would have been a hundred years ago, or two -- all word of mouth through the people who return, and return to their café.
It's a business that has lived long and prospered, I think, not because its owners sought financial prosperity, but because they sought to be a part of a community.
After all, what's the meaning of life?
Wealth is in our friends.
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