There are certain milestones in life that should be celebrated with panache and 20 years as a small business in Canmore is definitely one of them.
With that in mind, owners of Beamer’s Coffee Bar, Michael Beamer and Darren Boucher, have something special planned for Thursday (Jan. 9) – the day the local coffee shop celebrates 20 years in the community.
“It has been a great journey so far,” Beamer said. “I didn’t think I would be at 20 years, but I enjoy what I do. Like most jobs there are good and bad days, but I’m not done yet.
“I still have a few tricks up my sleeve.”
Two decades ago he was working at the Chateau Lake Louise when he sold everything he had and opened his first location on Bow Valley Trail in Canmore.
“One customer at a time – that is how this place was built; shaking hands and remembering names and being a person in the community, that is how we have grown,” Beamer said. “The failure rate is so high with food and beverage places; you are just going day by day to survive and the next thing you know, it is 20 years later.”
It was in 2003 that Boucher joined as business partner and the second downtown location was opened. Having moved to Canmore in 1993 when the original coffee bar opened, he knew Beamer and how he ran the business. He wanted to be part of the expansion and become a business owner.
The partnership has taken them to the 20-year mark. But a recent opportunity to tour the coffee growing regions of Colombia with their Calgary-based roasting company Coffee Concepts gave them the perfect opportunity to celebrate the anniversary.
The unique week-long opportunity opened their eyes to the effort it takes to produce a fresh cup of coffee at their café counter and provided a chance for them to procure a very special coffee to celebrate the anniversary.
“To be escorted around for a whole week to coffee growing regions in Colombia was the trip of a lifetime – we were shown the grass roots,” Beamer said. “If you knew what it took to put coffee in a cup, the price of coffee would be the price of Kona every day.”
The pair took eight flights in the country to visit various regions and a variety of farms and coffee cooperatives. There are over 560,000 coffee farms in Colombia and the average size is 1.2 hectares, or three acres.
“We were sitting in farmer’s living rooms having coffee, touring their farms and they were smiling ear to ear that we were there. It was so exciting for them to showcase what they do; they are very proud people,” Boucher said.
As well as an opportunity for them to see coffee origins, Beamer said it was a chance for the farmers to learn about what happens to the beans after they are produced.
“They don’t know what happens once they take their coffee to a cooperative, but they got to meet us first hand,” he said. “Farmers were waiting at these co-ops just to meet us and try their coffee.”
Boucher said the farmers were keen to learn from them what it takes to put coffee into their cups.
They also learned about the Federación Nacional de Cafeteros, or the Colombian Coffee Growers Federation, which represents coffee growers of the country domestically and internationally and puts money back into coffee regions to improve growers’ way of life. Six cents per pound goes back into schools, roads, health care and education. It also runs the National Coffee Research Centre, or Cenicafé, which Boucher and Beamer visited while in the country.
“They work with farmers and distribute information and technology from the Cenicafé,” Beamer said. “It is an amazing story.”
Visiting the cooperative, they also saw how the quality of coffee was checked, with millions of pounds a year processed and every bag sampled.
“The quality of the coffee leaving that country was top shelf,” Boucher said.
But it was the handshake deal with coffee farm owners Maria and Alfonso Mercedes Rangel that has the pair really excited.
The Rangels own Los Mandarinos, a Rainforest Alliance Certified coffee farm in the Santander province of Colombia, which lies on the furthest eastern branch of the Andes Mountains in Colombia.
The farm was selected twice to participate in the Cup of Excellence program, which selects the top lots from all coffee grown in Colombia and represents the highest honour a grower can receive.
Having visited the farm and tasted the coffee, Beamer and Boucher found it fit the right flavour profile they were looking for and that Canadians enjoy. They made the offer and shook on it.
As a result, 12 bags of special Beamer’s 20th Anniversary – Farm Direct Coffee, a single estate Castillo varietal, has been roasted in Calgary and will be on offer Thursday (Jan. 9) for free as part of the celebration of the business’s milestone.
It displays clean and complex layers of nuanced fruit and chocolate flavours, good body and a medium acidity with a slightly tart finish.
“We have done the full circle,” Beamer said. “We know we are paying full market value and the farmer is being paid. That is the beautiful thing about it, we know we are doing our part.”
