This cafe is sustainable in more ways than just the profit making motive
Mia Stainsby
Sun
Blake Hanacek, owner of Granville Island’s Agro Cafe Coffee & Roasting House hoists a fresh-brewed cup of Brazilian coffee outside the cafe on Railspur Alley. Photograph by : Ian lindsay, Vancouver Sun
It’s nice to know that not everyone measures profit in dollars. At Agro Cafe, it’s measured by the good that they do. The CEO of this two-outlet cafe is 26-year-old Blake Hanacek and I’d like to see him become more famous, influential and rich than Bill Gates.
Agro Cafe (there’s one in Yaletown and another on Granville Island) is the showcase for the work being done by a non-profit organization he founded, Agricultural Growers Resource Organization Developing Economic Viability. The cafe name is an acronym for the organization, which works with coffee farmers in developing countries, helping them to become part of the Fair Trade network of farmers.
Agro Cafe coffees are bought directly from these farmers. Hanacek (whose academic background is in sustainable rural development and resource management) does the cupping and roasting and serves nine single origin coffees, using the Clover machine, brewing single cups.
Menus at the two locations are similar but the Yaletown location serves fine cheese and charcuterie as well. Ingredients are as green and healthy as possible — local, unmedicated, free range, organic, sustainable, you name it. It’s licensed and even the beers and wines are organic and local, where possible.
I tried the Eat Your Greens salad, a big bowl of crisp organic greens, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, carrot ribbons, sprouts, toasted almonds, dried cranberries and goat cheese lightly tossed with blackberry balsamic dressing. A great lunch. A side of hand-cut fries (skin on) featured lovely starchy potatoes cooked just right. West Coast crab melt with caramelized onions, sprouts, greens and lemon basil aioli was sandwiched between dark rye. And the coffee was very good.
Agro is popular for breakfast as well, especially the breakfast specials, which can be Spanish frittata one day and eggs benedict the next. It’s very much a cafe with the menu of breakfasts, salads and sandwiches as the main players but all this humble food is big on quality.
Hanacek wants his operations to be models of sustainable businesses so his take-out dishes are compostable; the cutlery is made from potatoes and he trucks 800 pounds of coffee grounds to the UBC farm for compost in his 1977 Volkswagen bus. He also gives lectures to UBC’s commerce, agriculture and development classes about sustainable businesses and was nominated for the Alumni Achievement Award last year.
“It isn’t just the bottom line,” he preaches. “You have to make money in a socially and environmentally responsible way.”
If you go to the Yaletown branch, please be advised that the see-through glass door to the washroom (visible from the room) becomes opaque when you lock the door — a legacy from a former business. It gives a wink-wink meaning to that cafe’s name, which was Don’t Show The Elephant.
AGRO CAFE
1363 Railspur Alley, Granville Island, 604-669-0724; and 1207 Hamilton St., 604-605-1292. www.agrocafe.org
© The Vancouver Sun 2008
