When Starbucks Corp. abandoned manual grinders a decade ago, a new wave of coffee sellers, from Stumptown Coffee Roasters in Portland and Chicago-based Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea Inc., to Vancouver's JJ Bean Coffee Roasters and Caffè Artigiano, picked up where the dominant chain left off.
Now Artigiano is attempting a Starbucks-like ascent, not in sheer scale but in geographic scope. The same difficult equation exists: to maintain a delicate quality as the company gets larger and further flung. Like Starbucks before it, Artigiano has staked its expansion on developing quality workers at its existing cafés to open new stores and finding top-quality busy locations to draw in new customers one by one.
Is that something it can achieve?
“As you get bigger, the purists will say you'll never be as good as when you had one, two cafés. It's hard to convince them it's possible,” said Willie Mounzer, CEO and co-owner of Artigiano. “We'll never be Starbucks. You just have to take it slow. If Artigiano can occupy this niche in Vancouver, it can do it anywhere.”
We had three guests join us for a live online discussion of all things coffee. You can replay the chat in the box below.
Bryant Simon is a history professor and director of American Studies at Temple University in Philadelphia, and author of Everything but the Coffee: Learning about America from Starbucks.
Kyle Straw is general manager of Caffè Artigiano on Hornby Street in downtown Vancouver, one of the 14 cafes run by the small and ambitious Vancouver coffee chain. Mr. Straw is the current Canadian Barista Champion (Artigiano has won all seven years the competition has been held) and he will go to London for the world competition in June.
David Ebner, a business reporter in The Globe's B.C. bureau who wrote the article on Caffe Artigiano, also participated.
