A Kiwi ex-broker turned coffee roaster has just opened a second café in Toronto after his first effort won roaring reviews. Hospitality drops by for a fern-patterned flat white and finds some happy expats.

By Eloise Gibson

Mention you are looking for a decent cup of coffee in Toronto, and chances are you’ll be directed to Te Aro.
Not the central Wellington suburb, mind you, but the spacious café in the trendy Canadian lakeside suburb of Leslieville.
It’s no coincidence that the two share a name – owners Andy and Jessie Wilkin borrowed the title and a dose of coffee-making know-how from central Wellington.
Their Kiwi-style espresso is a far cry from the generic brews served up by the popular Canadian coffee chains.
Just over a year after opening, the concept is proving so popular that Andy celebrated his 30th birthday by opening a second café.
The Kiwi/Canadian couple had a light-bulb moment when they were married in Toronto in 2007. About 50 New Zealand guests flew over for the wedding, and virtually all of them complained about the coffee, says Jessie.
“(In New Zealand) you can go into almost any café and the quality of coffee would be really high whereas in Toronto….it is really hit or miss.”
When the pair returned to New Zealand (where Andy grew up and Jessie lived with him for more than six years) they immediately started researching to open a business. A year and a half later they returned to Toronto with a business plan, their savings, and a bank loan.
It was the start of a new working life for the pair. At the time, Andy was a commercial property broker and Jessie was a banker. A week into what was supposed to be her temporary leave of absence from the bank, Jessie was begging to stay at the café and never go back. “It was really natural,” she says.
Now she runs the front-of-house, while Andy is in charge of the coffee beans.
To get started roasting his own beans, Andy brought a load of “crappy” green coffee beans and played around, using a mix of trial and error and training from the machine’s manufacturer. Following the lead of iconic Wellington coffee roasters Caffe L’affare and Allpress, he installed a hot air fluid bed roaster in the corner of the café floor. The fluid bed roaster, which roasts beans on a bed of hot air, gives you more control and a cleaner roast than traditional drum roasters, he says.
Experts such as L’affare’s Tony Kerridge were happy to share their secrets. “Andy was lucky that people in New Zealand were really, really open about giving him information,” says Jessie. “We sort of picked up pieces from all these different (Wellington) roasters,” says Andy.
The method seems to have worked. When Te Aro Roasters opened its doors in 2009 it was judged best new café by the popular Toronto arts and culture website BlogTO, and Andy has won kudos for his coffee beans.
To understand this success, it helps to know a little about the Canadian coffee market, where most brews are generic, mass-marketed affairs. By far the most popular coffee retailer is Tim Hortons – the chain named after a deceased pro hockey player that boasts more Canadian outlets than McDonalds. It might taste indifferent to outsiders, but “Tims”, as it is called, is a cultural icon to Canadians (so much so that the Canadian military opened a Tim Hortons in Afghanistan in 2006).
Despite the popularity of the big chains, Andy says there is a huge market for independent coffee. “There’s actually quite a big coffee culture in Toronto and it is growing a lot.”
“North America in general, especially the States, is actually quite advanced in terms of a specialty coffee industry.”
He is tactful when asked about the success of the big chains. “New Zealand is very espresso-based, and over here there are all sorts of different forms of extracting coffee.”
But he acknowledges there are some major cultural differences. “I had to learn how a brewer worked, and I’ve actually become quite fond of it,” he laughs. “There are all sorts of different brewing methods that we’re starting to play with.”
Part of Te Aro’s ethos is teaching customers how to appreciate and brew good coffee. The couple’s coffee cupping nights (the equivalent of a wine tasting evening, where enthusiasts can learn to pick out such improbable flavours as tobacco, chocolate and blueberry by slurping coffee from a spoon) have attracted the attention of Toronto food websites and the National Post newspaper.
The new café, in the western Toronto suburb of Ossington, has been designed to hold brewing nights where people can learn to make a quality cup of coffee at home, using various pieces of equipment. Fans of the coffee can purchase bags of Te Aro’s eponymous beans, packaged with endearingly Kiwi names such as Big Bro, Little Bro, and Easy Mate (the decaf variety).
Not surprisingly, Te Aro has a healthy base of Australian and New Zealand fans. Some expats will travel across Toronto to savour one of their beloved flat whites, a style of coffee that is mostly unheard of outside of Australasia. Te Aro’s Canadian baristas churn out flat whites with a deftness that rivals the best baristas in New Zealand, even lovingly tracing a fern pattern in the foam. It is not unusual to hear them patiently explaining the ins and outs to Canadian customers, many of whom have been persuaded to try one.
Andy is now a certified cupping judge, and travels to countries such as Guatemala to help judge prestigious competitions for coffee beans. These are high stakes contests, after which the top couple of dozen coffees – as judged by the panel – will sell at auction for high prices. Between judging and sourcing beans for the café, Andy spends a lot of time tasting coffee. “A lot we don’t buy. When you find amazing coffee you jump on it as quick as possible,” he says. Both Andy and Jessie are partial to Ethiopian coffee. “It makes your cappuccino taste like blueberry pancakes,” says Jessie.
The raw, “green” beans come from Africa, Indonesia, Central America and elsewhere, depending on the season. Jessie says they prefer to buy the best quality rather than limiting purchases to organic or Fair Trade. Instead the company tries to be ethical by learning where each batch of coffee is from and what the farmer is being paid, although it is not possible for every country.
“We will only buy from brokers who can provide details of the farmer. The traceability is really important to us,” says Jessie. “A lot of people are still caught up on…organic or fair trade but…there is really high quality coffee from small farms and micro (producers) that could be ethical as well.”
The pair has no plans to go back to their old jobs, preferring to follow the coffee business as far as it can take them. Next on the agenda is growing the wholesale side of the business, currently about 30 per cent of the company. Te Aro already sells to some nearby cafes in Leslieville, a few restaurants and one high-end supermarket. Andy would like to sell more. But right now the focus is on celebrating his birthday. He grins when he is asked how he will mark the day: “I’ve spent all week roasting my favourite coffees,” he says.