Indie cafés perk up for coffee festival
Running May 5 to 11, expanding festival welcomes Halifax shops for the first time
Four years ago, Alex Sereno came up with what he thought was a great idea.
“I’m a micro-roaster,” Sereno said, referring to Barista Micro-Roaster, the company he founded with childhood pal Enrico Serena and which sells coffee to restaurants, cafés and stores.
“We were looking at all these events,” said Sereno, in a phone interview from his office in Ahuntsic Thursday. “Poutine Week. Burger Week. We were saying, ‘How come there’s no coffee week?’ We thought, there’s a booming industry out there, the independent coffee industry. We have clients. It’s growing. So we thought, why don’t we do a little independent festival and see what happens? And it turned out to be a pretty cool success. Over 100 coffee shops participated. Then we said maybe we have something!”
That was the birth of Le Café Fest, which is celebrating its fourth edition this week. It runs from Sunday to Saturday May 11 and once again there’s about 100 cafés across Quebec participating and, for the first time, the festival is also including coffee shops in Halifax.
One of the cooler things is an amazing deal for coffee fans on the final day, May 11, when most of the participating cafés will offer customers a specialty coffee for a buck (without milk) or two (with milk). There are more than 60 cafés in Montreal taking part in the festival, including Le Depanneur Café on Bernard St., Café Lézard on Masson St., Aloha Espresso Bar on de la Commune in Old Montreal, Café L’Étincelle on Beaubien St., and Café Orr on Papineau Ave.
There will also be an event mixing two big passions for Montrealers — sipping high-end coffee and biking. It starts with a coffee-making course and site tour at the headquarters of Barista — 9150 Meilleur St., Suite 105. Then, with bicycles provided by Fitz & Follwell Co., folks will bike from Ahuntsic down to Le Picnic Vélo Café, on Rachel St. just off Parc Lafontaine. There are two sessions, at 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. on Monday. If you’re interested in this free activity, call Fitz & Follwell at: 514-521-8356, ext. 311.
There will also be a Barista Challenge at the Café L’Étincelle on Wednesday at 4:30 p.m., with local baristas facing off against each other in a friendly competition.
“We want to bring everyone together to promote what we do, which is indie coffee,” said Sereno. “We want to help the consumer understand what we do. We’re in third-wave coffee and we want people to know what third-wave coffee is.”
Here’s Sereno’s explanation for what defines third-wave coffee.
“The first wave was our parents in the ’50s and ’60s, when you used to drink coffee to give yourself a jolt. It wasn’t a beverage you’d drink because you appreciated it. You’d need a coffee jolt. Then at the end of the ’80s, beginning of the ’90s, a few big chains changed that mindset. They told the public, ‘Hey guys, you know you can drink good coffee and there’s great ways to discover that.’ I attribute that second wave to Starbucks. Because of the Starbucks phenomena, people were initiated to good coffee and it gave birth to a totally different industry, which is third-wave coffee. That’s smaller guys like me who source coffee, smaller batches, roast it in an artisanal way and we know how to serve it. We’re baristas, too. My industry is literally like the microbrewery industry.”
Sereno’s company, Barista, has existed for 15 years and their motto is, ‘We’re going to make you taste Italy here, fresh, every week’. Their specialty is Italian-style espresso coffee.
And every week he hears about new independent cafés opening up, which is why he figured Le Café Fest is just what the province needed.
We want people to know what third-wave coffee is.