John Neate, Jr. may have founded JJ Bean Coffee Roasters in 1996, but his family’s relationship with coffee extends all the way back to the first half of the 20th century.
Beginning in 1945, Neate’s grandfather and father operated a Vancouver-based wholesale roasting company called Neate’s Coffee. In 1979, Neate joined the business and remained there until 1990, when the family sold Neate’s Coffee to Nestle.
Neate worked for Nestle for six years before deciding to re-establish the Neate family in the local coffee landscape, this time as JJ Bean Coffee Roasters (the “JJ” stands for John Jr.).
Back when Neate launched JJ Bean, the Vancouver coffee scene was dominated by Seattle-based juggernaut Starbucks.
“Everybody talked about Starbucks, and Starbucks became the one that I wanted to be better than,” Neate recalls in a recent phone interview.
Judging by the response of Westender readers – who named JJ Bean their favourite place for coffee in the city – Neate met, and then exceeded, his original goal.
JJ Bean operates 20 stores in Vancouver; in the last 18 months, it has opened four locations in Toronto, with another slated to open in 2018.
Earlier this year, it opened its biggest store to date at UBC, and “it’s being received really well,” Neate says.
But if there’s a foundation for JJ Bean’s success, it’s the coffee bean. Ground zero for quality control is the company’s roasting location on Powell Street.
“We’ve always taken the approach that each coffee needs to be taken to its own different roast level,” says Neate. “We have very defining lines as to how coffee should be roasted, and we want coffee for the world. We want people who drink dark roast to be able to drink JJ Bean, as well as people who want single-origin coffee and people who want lighter roast.
“We’re trying to do the best in each category.”
They also make freshness a priority. “Coffee, once it’s roasted, has about 14 days before it releases carbon dioxide, so if coffee isn’t consumed within that window, it’s never fresh,” Neate says.
The company roasts beans five days a week via three different roasters – a five-kilogram, a 12-kg and a 22-kg – that enable them to “do the batch sizes to get coffee fresh,” says Neate.
But it’s not just beans that have established JJ Bean as a key player in the Vancouver coffee scene. It’s also the food items.
“Starbucks’ weakness has always been food, because it’s always been third-party. So, doing our own food was very expensive and hard to make competitive, but we knew that it would be a defining thing for the consumer,” Neate says, noting that every JJ Bean location has double ovens, and bakers who start at 5:30 a.m. – and then there's the fact that each location has its own unique look and flair.
“People rail against big companies: ‘They’re cookie cutter, every store looks the same.’ And so we’ve really spent a lot of time and money trying to make every one of our stores look different, and fitting the neighborhood that they belong in,” Neate explains.
“I go to cafés all over the world, and Vancouver is definitely one of the best in terms of the standards that are up there,” he adds.
“Coffee here is such a great source of pride. Vancouver cafés are the leaders in the country by far.”
JJ Bean
Various locations
Gold – Best Coffee Shop
