Living in Alberta comes with so many perks. One of the best, is the incredible specialty coffee community that calls this province home. While major cities like Calgary & Edmonton often get a lot of buzz, there are numerous other cities that are carving out their own niche and doing a stellar job at caffeinating their community.
One such roaster is B\RDY Coffee Co., located in Red Deer (half-way between Calgary & Edmonton) and has quickly become my go-to spot to stop at when I find myself travelling between these two cities. But what if I told you they’re not only serving up specialty coffee, but also craft beer! Yup, talk about double-trouble!
And so with all that going for them, and an owner (Ryan) who is one of the nicest guys around, it was clear to me that I had to share their story on my blog this month. After all, its July 1st (Canada Day) and who better to showcase than an amazing Canadian Coffee Roaster. So without further ado, here’s the story of B\RDY COFFEE CO. Enjoy the read!
So great to get the chance to connect with you Ryan! Help our audience get to know you a bit better…What’s your personal backstory in coffee? How did you get started? What keeps you going in coffee?
Tyler, Great to catch up again. My coffee story really starts about 8-9 years ago when I started noticing a significant difference in my perception of what coffee was…to what it could be, and that was just the beginning. The spark would be a romanticised idea of being a “coffee roaster” and that just seemed cool at the time. So my buddy and I purchased a small 1KG drum roaster and got ourselves into the hobby. The reality was we had no idea what we were doing, but I feel that needed to be part of the process. We wrecked a lot of coffee I’m sure, but in time I started to get an understanding of what was actually going on inside that roaster with all that fun science and what we needed to be done to make it taste better.
Like anything that is going to turn into a business or a job, there comes a point where you need to make a decision on what the future was going to look like in the world of coffee with me in it, and so my wife and I decided to start B\RDY Coffee Co. It’s been an amazing 6 years of learning and growing, and what keeps me going with this journey is probably the same thing that got me started…the Question of “What can coffee be to me and those I get to share it with!!” The specialty coffee industry is changing fast all the time, and we’re here for the ride.
Before we go much further, share with our readers what you’re drinking/enjoying these days when it comes to coffee!
Good timing and great question! At this very moment I’m into a filter brew from the Gasca Brothers at Finca Zarza in the Huila region of Colombia. It’s a washed Pink Bourbon that has a distinct peach quality that is very delightful. This coffee has been brought to us via the great people at Apex Coffee Imports!!
I am always fascinated in the origin story of how a coffee roaster selects their name/brand, and so I may need to brush up on my ornithology. Help our readers to get to know the story behind the choice of your name. Why B\RDY Coffee? Is there a significance or symbolism about this for you?
This is one of those things where both the significance and the simplicity was important. We wanted the name to be something that represented the coffee you taste as well as the softness of the word you pronounce, paired with something that has some attachment to who we are. And with all of that in mind…B\RDY landed on my mind on a drive home one day, and my beautiful wife agreed nearly instantly when I suggested the idea. It just fit, and for a couple reasons! Our family loves bird watching and it’s an easy and soft word to say! I still look at the name at times and think “Man, I love that name”
You recently did a pretty significant re-brand with your packaging & cups. I hear there is a pretty cool story to how this came about. Can you share more about this.
Yeah, this is a cool story, and one that we feel so blessed to be a part of.
As a growing business who was looking for a way to have better exposure and shelf appeal, we knew that we needed to head down the avenue of printed and designed bags and cups. The problem was the large volume that is needed to be order when it comes to items like custom bags and cups. We found ourselves in limbo as to what we were going to do and when/if we were going to pull the trigger on something like this…
Somewhere in the middle of our struggles the MTPAK packaging design contest came across our vision and was an absolute no brainer to enter. If I’m honest, I didn’t think we stood a chance considering the other submissions we saw alongside of ours. There were a lot of beautiful and very creative designs and was just thrilled to be named a finalist when they started narrowing it down at the end. It was to our complete surprise and delight to open an email one early morning that let us know that we were chosen as winners of the contest. My brother Cody worked tirelessly on the design and submission and deserves all the credit for making this happen.
This contest win has allowed us to pursue the dream of designing and printing our very own custom packaging material and we feel immensely blessed by it.
So home for you is Red Deer, Alberta (located exactly half-way between Calgary & Edmonton). Can you share more about Red Deer’s coffee culture. Do you see a lot of influences from being between two well-known cities? Or does Red Deer kinda march to the beat of its own drum?
Much like one might see the cities of Edmonton and Calgary follow the lead of some the worlds larger metropolises regarding trends in any given category, I feel Red Deer is doing the same thing with coffee culture when it looks north and south. But we still have a very rural mindset here in central Alberta, and I don’t mean that in a bad way.
People really only know what they know but are thrilled when you give them an opportunity to try something new or explore something they otherwise might not search out themselves. Speaking for myself and B\RDY, we are absolutely influenced by the coffee players in Calgary and Edmonton and wouldn’t be doing coffee the way we do if it weren’t for some of those guys.
You share your space at the Red Deer Farmers Market with Craft Beer Commonwealth. Personally, I love the combination of one space serving these two craft beverages. How did this partnership come about? What are the benefits of this partnership?
Well, it started as a partnership but turned into a merging of the two craft beverages quite quickly. Just the dynamics of how both businesses needed to be ran, it just made sense to put them together. We kept the names separate as we felt that they both needed that at the time. It was a bit of a whirl wind in regard to the actual combining of the two businesses, but essentially Craft Beer Commonwealth needed a general manager, and I needed a good reason to be here 100% of my working day.
So a “shotgun wedding” of a sense happened pretty quickly and before I could really blink, I was serving great beer alongside our coffee as well. There are a lot of parallels in the two worlds of beer and coffee that made a lot of sense and shared a lot of benefits. Even just mechanically it makes sense. Between the two sides you can share a dishwasher, sink, cooler, glass rinser etc. But the biggest would be our team…we love serving our guests great craft beverages!
I feel like we all desire to bring about positive change when it comes to specialty coffee. What would you like to see change—either locally or globally—when it comes to the specialty coffee space? How is Birdy moving the needle towards this change?
Yeah, I think every business owner has the ability to bring positive change into what they offer whether big or small and that is a responsibility I certainly feel.
A couple things locally that I see in front of me that we at Birdy feel we can tackle would be making sure that people feel blessed by whatever it is we get to offer them. We understand that everyone has a budget for the things they go out and purchase, and we want them to be as thrilled as possible about what they just bought from us.
Another thing I want to break down is some of the pretentiousness and seclusion that coffee can possess. I get to be involved in the brewery scene and often ask myself “why do the beer people get along so much better than the coffee people?” I don’t know if I’ve totally gotten to the bottom of that, but we certainly love to help educate people on coffee and help them on their journey to find the coffee and brew method that works best for them without coming across as anything more than super passionate about the world of coffee.
Globally I’m going to take a swing at the fairly recognizable problem that most all coffee producers face…sustainability and living wages. It’s becoming increasingly apparent that coffee and its future depend highly on what we are doing at this very moment. In order for the farms that I/we love to continue planting the next crop successfully, they need a living wage and more to keep going strong. Just making sure that the importers we work with are on the same page is key and educating people around us about the importance of farm sustainability is a something we can do so there is great coffee to be loved for future generations.
Thank you so much for taking the time to share your story. Is there anything else you’d like to say. Here’s your chance.
I’d just like to say thank-you for sharing a snapshot of our story here at B\RDY Coffee and keep doing what you do well.
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Contact Info:
web: www.birdycoffeeco.ca
instagram: @birdycoffeeco
email: orders@birdycoffeeco.ca
Find their beans: If you’re looking to get your hands on some beans then definitely check out their web-store for what they’re currently roasting.
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I just wanted to say a huge thanks again to Ryan at B\RDY Coffee for being a huge contributor to the specialty coffee community in Red Deer, but also across Alberta & Canada! Be sure to check out his site, and grab some coffee.
-Tyler
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