Turning coffee creations into performance art
Adelaide St. W. coffee shop brings espresso trike to Toronto’s coffee addicts
It’s a sacred ritual. But one that’s usually mundane and easy to forget.
Until, that is, your barista grinds the beans for your morning coffee on a tricycle and, using a stir stick, draws your portrait in the milk foam.
“It’s about performance art, something no one has ever seen before,” says Josh Lyon, fellow coffee addict and head of marketing and partnerships at Tokyo Smoke, a pair of industrial-chic and off-the-beatenpath downtown cafés.
“It’s about elevating the experience.”
And adding spectacle to the top of your day. The Tokyo Smoke “Espresso Trike,” imported from the United Kingdom by Tokyo Smoke’s owners, is something to behold. About as big as a mobile ice cream cart, but sleeker and cooler, it’s a self-contained espresso-making unit.
Barista Brian Leonard clips his bike shoes into the pedals. He flips a switch to “coffee” mode and uses leg power to grind the beans and pump hot water to the espresso machine. The rest is the same as in a stationary shop.
Except after the foam is poured, Leonard paints a picture of his customer’s mug, well, in the mug.
Customers are wowed. When the bike turns up at music festivals, farmers’ markets and events such as Nuit Blanche, where Leonard was pulling free lattes all night long, it draws a crowd.
The most asked question: can I ride it? Sadly, the answer is no. It’s difficult to operate, expensive and delicate, Lyon says. Not to mention, Leonard adds: “it needs a barista with some espresso in their body.”
Leonard’s been the main rider since April, a few months after the trike, the second in Canada, landed in Toronto.
Tokyo Smoke’s owners, entrepreneurs with interests in the fashion and marijuana industries, wanted to make their café’s coffee mobile. But in a way that keeps with their “design first” sensibilities of “clean lines, lack of clutter, elegance and simplicity,” Lyon says.
Someone spotted the Velopresso trike online and that was it.
Leonard, who calls himself Barista Brian, shot to fame earlier this year after a latte foam Blue Jays’ logo he created earned him thousands of likes on the team’s Facebook page.
Pure happenstance brought Leonard into Tokyo Smoke one day in April, to get a coffee for himself.
Looking to elevate his own career, he showed staff his skills with milk foam. He also saw the trike and got excited about the prospect of combining his art form with exercise.
It’s been easy riding ever since — even though powering the trike takes a good amount of muscle.
And Leonard uses plenty of that to pedal out up to 40 espressos an hour, Lyon says, once the giant gadget is loaded with water and beans. It can travel as far as Leonard’s legs can take it and, Lyon says, “depending on how much coffee Brian’s able to drink.”
On a recent morning, Leonard fires up the Espresso Trike near Tokyo Smoke’s flagship, a surprising shop tucked into the fire-escape of an old industrial building on Adelaide St. W. near Strachan Ave. — in addition to coffee they sell a variety of chic collectibles, such as antique cigar boxes and the occasional vintage Barbie doll.
Before he slips a warm latte in my hands, Leonard takes out a wooden stir stick and sets to work. In seconds, the foam yields to coffee-tinged lines and I feel like I’m staring into a mirror. It makes me smile.
“I call them coffee caricatures,” Leonard says. “It’s a fun way to engage with someone.”
And memorable too. Got an idea for Sourced? Email mhenry@thestar.ca.