Quality You Can Feel Good About

• Posted on 22 August 2017
• By Ben Cowie
• Posted in Cafe News
• 0

Feel good knowing that the coffee you drink at our cafe is ethically sourced

This week's blog is a story about people. It's also about feeling good while drinking amazing coffee. We are passionate about four things at London Bicycle Café: Service, Quality, Inclusiveness, and Community. We believe our coffee is the best in the city, because we source better beans, and serve your coffee with incredible precision and attention to detail. All of those steps, farming, roasting, and preparing/serving, take the time and dedication of real humans to make sure you get the best possible drink in your cup. We admit that our drinks cost a little more than a coffee elsewhere, and we're proud of that. We feel that your extra coin is well spent, because it's invested in people through our entire supply chain. We don't use the money you spend on your coffee for expensive marketing campaigns, or branded stadiums, we use it to support real people working to make you the best cup of coffee in the city. Here's why coffee from us is different than coffee elsewhere:

1. Our coffee starts at farms in the Americas and Africa. The farmers working with Rosso carefully select coffee cherries that are perfectly ripe, and spend more time and energy processing and drying coffee than other farms. These farmers are the first part of creating an amazing cup of coffee for you in our shop. "Fair Trade" coffee means that farmers get at least the commodity price (~$1.40 US/pound), the farmers that grow our coffee are paid around $4-5 per pound, about three times more than fair trade prices. This means a higher quality of life for the people who grow our beans, and better beans in every cup.
2. Dried coffee beans are shipped to Rosso, where it is roasted and prepared by expert coffee roasters who are focused on precision roasting to create specific flavours. They're celebrating their tenth anniversary this year, and were recently named finalists in the Calgary Small Business awards. One of the reasons we chose Rosso as our coffee provider is their investment in coffee producing communities with the idea that year after year, we will increase farmers' quality of life while achieving a higher quality product, .
3. Freshly roasted coffee beans are shipped to us in London, where we grind and extract delicious flavours from those high quality beans. Your coffee is prepared using state-of-the-art equipment, while our baristas precisely measure coffee, water, and dairy (or non-dairy) in your cup. We know that local businesses can only thrive when everyone can participate in our community and enjoy the fruits of each others' labour. To ensure our staff can support their families, reach higher for an education, and follow their dreams and passions, we pay everybody on our staff a living wage. Living Wage London has estimated what the actual cost of living is for people in our city, and realized that people working for a living wage can get ahead and help themselves be part of our communities. Our business, whether repairing bikes, or making perfect cups of coffee, requires amazing skills, service, and attention to detail, and we're proud to pay our staff a living wage to provide those services at a professional level. We hope that knowing our staff is paid a living wage will help you choose our coffee, too.

There is an enormous human cost to every cup of coffee served in the city, and we want you to feel great about the coffee you choose. When you buy a cup of Rosso from London Bicycle Café, you're supporting real people every step of the way. When you buy a cup from us, it's not just the coffee giving you a warm feeling inside.