Roasting

JenEric Coffee is as Canadian as we can get

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Hello Coffee Lovers,

As much as I applaud the movement to buy Canadian, there are certain limitations when it comes to producing coffee.

We roast, flavour, pack, and sell all from our home in Ottawa.

Green Beans

Any coffee company that tells you they are 100% Canadian is lying. Canada doesn’t produce any coffee beans.

We here at JenEric Coffee order our beans through two Canadian resellers: U-Roast-It and Green Coffee Co.

We always buy high grown and fair trade beans from Sumatra, Guatemala, Peru, Mexico, or Honduras.

Roasting

All our beans are roasted in the back yard on our custom built BBQ roaster (it’s only for coffee). The BBQ is Broil-Mate (Canadian company but made in China) and the roasting parts were from RK Drums (US company but the only one that made this when we were buying 8 years ago).

Flavouring

We use Lorann Flavouring, which is unfortunately an American company. We have tried other flavouring, but it’s the best out there for smaller bottles. We do purchase from The Vanilla Food Company, a Canadian reseller.

Packaging

Once we’ve worked our way through our current stock of bags, we’ll be buying new ones from Pouch Makers Canada.

Labels

We used to get all our labels printed at Vista Print Canada, which is the Canadian branch of a Dutch Company.

We’ve recently bought a Lien sticker machine so that we can produce them in-house instead. The company is from Shanghai.

We create our own designs and if we ever have the extra cash, we’d get a Canadian designer.

Websites

This blog and everything attached to it is hosted by the fantastic CanSpace. The servers and service are all in Canada.

For our Store JenEric Coffee and Crochet we use Square, which is American but has a free tier which is really nice. We’re looking into an alternative but don’t really want to add extra costs. Also, Square is really easy to use and works extremely well.

Overall

The products from JenEric Coffee are processed and put together in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. We’re trying our best to have mostly Canadian parts but it’s not easy.

I hope this has helped you understand the process a little better.

May your coffee be stronger than your fatigue,

Éric

Roasting in winter

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Hello Coffee Lovers,

Yes, it’s still winter here. There are some advantages to roasting in winter. The first being that the beans cool faster. The second being that roasting things at 250-300 Celcius is a lot more tolerable when the temperature outside is -5.

The shoveling and having to stop for snowfall isn’t as much fun.

I was roasting this weekend to prepare for Mini Ottawa Comiccon. It’s at the EY centre and will be a vendors market with free entrance (Although parking is $10).

Hours are 11-6 on Saturday and 11-5 on Sunday.

Hope to see you there,

Éric

Why We Don’t Offer Brewed Coffee Part 2

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Hello Coffee Lovers!

Two months ago I wrote: Why We Don’t Offer Brewed Coffee.

After having multiple discussions with people, I realized I forgot a few points.

Any schlub could go out and buy a cheap single cup coffee machine and a giant box of terrible coffee pods and sell it for $3. This fulfills the need to sell coffee and creates income. I won’t do it for 2 reasons: Quality and Reputation

Quality

We at JenEric Coffee pride ourselves on the quality of our beans, roast, and flavours. If you don’t like our coffee, it’s because of personal taste and not a deficiency in our quality. When I go to an event I expect that either the venue is selling crap coffee, or there is no coffee. When there is a coffee vendor I expect that they take a modicum of pride in what they do and have decent coffee. (Of course school and community events don’t count in this.)

If we do something, I want to do it right and legally, with all required permits and inspections.

Reputation

When you sell something you, as a small business, are judged on that. So if you have one thing that is of excellent quality and another that is horrible, you’ll be judged on the latter. You can’t, in the long run, rely on first time buyers. You need to make sure that your clients want more of what you’re selling. At this point, JenEric Coffee sells more to repeat clients than new ones, and that’s a wonderful thing. Passionate, dedicated fans are the backbone to a successful business.

If we started doing things in half-measures and didn’t take pride in our quality, we’d start losing those people.

 

I hope this helps clear up and add to my previous post.

Thank you for reading and for loving our coffee!

Éric

Why We Don’t Offer Brewed Coffee

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Hello My Imaginary Friends and Coffee Lovers,

I’ve been asked a lot by people why we don’t offer brewed coffee for sale. Recently, an event we applied to rejected us because we wouldn’t sell brewed coffee.

On the surface there doesn’t seem to be a big difference between selling coffee beans and selling coffee. Because of that, we often get people asking us why we don’t sell brewed coffee. The short answer is that it’s a completely different business and we don’t have the money, time, or roasting output to invest into it. The long answer breaks down into 3 parts; Equipment, Permits, and Roasting Output.

Equipment and extras

Here’s a basic list of equipment we’d need to do it properly:

  • Grinders (We’d need to pre-grind all our beans, so we’d need something that can do large loads and is easily cleaned to avoid allergic reactions.)
  • Brewers (At least 2 large-scale airpot drip brewers. That way we can brew directly into large pots and not burn each other with glass diner pots.)
  • Airtight Storage for the ground beans (In order to prepare we’d need to have something that can store the grinds without losing their quality)
  • Cups, lids, and stuff for coffee (Even at one size, it’s quite the investment to get enough of everything and always best to overbuy rather than run out)
  • Booth set up and organization (We need everything to store dairy products in bulk safely. Then then we need a place for people to prepare their coffee, a place to roast, and a place to vend.)

All that goes with making sure we have electricity, cleaning supplies, water, and enough of everything to get through the day.

Permits

The required permits for sealed coffee beans are minimal. Selling them doesn’t require to much paperwork. Meanwhile, selling prepared food requires permits, permission from the venue, inspection of the product, equipment, and location.

That’s a lot more work and expense. Especially for a 2 or 3 day convention.

Roasting output

This is a big one. It takes me roughly an hour for every 2.5 pounds of coffee. That’s a lot of work. I normally take roughly 4-6 days of 12-14 hours to prepare for Ottawa Comiccon. A large bag (1/2 lbs) should make roughly 12 large (16-18oz) cups of coffee. I’ve estimated that at Ottawa Comiccon we would on the low end sell 300 cups a day high end 1000+.

This would roughly double the roasting I need to do (I would be running on the “expect the worst but plan for the best”) unless I completely dropped selling beans. Which would be a stupid decision seeing as it’s a great seller.

Conclusion

Coffee is our passion and we love it. I would love to buy a coffee cart and spend a whole lot of time at festivals and conventions selling brewed coffee. However, that’s not my business. You wouldn’t ask a milk farmer why he doesn’t sell cakes or a writer why they don’t sell paper. Right?

It comes down to resources. I’d rather concentrate our money on perfecting the beans and the roasting rather than branching out.

 

Thank you for reading,

Éric

All Work and no Sleep Makes Éric something something…

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Hello My Imaginary Friends,

Have you ever gotten to the point where you’re so busy, or your to-do list is so long, that you feel like you’re drowning? Well I’m almost there. The ocean of stuff is turbulent and I’m barely dog paddling. All of it is made worse by lack of sleep and this stupid, unending cold.

I’m starting to realize I might have taken on too much too quickly this year and certain things have been suffering because of it. Mostly my writing, or lack thereof, and other creative endeavours like FADDS.

What am I going to do about it? I’m going to get as much done of what I have already promised and try to stop taking on more projects. Both publishers I work with are going to settle down into a slower routine and after Ottawa Comic Con, conventions will slow down too.

All that said, I’m going to try and take a week off to relax after OCC. Maybe play Skyrim with the little Dragon.

I have a lot of coffee to roast and not much time so I’ll see you later.

Éric