Ottawa is “a government town that runs on coffee,” according to Genevieve Seguin, who plans to bring Ottawa’s first ever coffee festival to life.
Seguin and co-organizers Melanie Burgess and Jennifer Quintanilla have been working on this project for the last year.
Their initial efforts have already been met with success—they’ve already sold over 10 thousand tickets.
Burgess came up with the idea around May 2018.
“We felt that there were a ton of great roasters in the area, but there wasn’t an event bringing them all together yet for the general public,” Burgess said.
“Roasters are the vein of Ottawa,” Seguin, said, adding that the number of local coffee roasters in the city has grown exponentially over the past decade. “The numbers have doubled, if not more.”
This year, the coffee fest will be featuring 13 roasters, as well as local food vendors. The roster of roasters includes local businesses like Happy Goat Coffee, Bridgehead, and Cloud Forest.
“Every roaster in Ottawa is unique and brings something different to the table,” Burgess said. “Anytime you’re having one of their coffees or you’re in one of their shops, you feel something different. They all have their own unique vibes and causes, which makes them really special.”
“Everybody drinks coffee, but not everybody knows the work that goes into it. We want to show people the educational side to coffee,” Seguin said.
Burgess added that the team realized through their research that there was a lot more to the coffee than just enjoying it.
“It was a big learning experience for us in terms of all the work that goes into producing coffee and it’s incredible. It was eye-opening,” Burgess said. “We wanted to bring more awareness of what goes into the coffee so that the public could experience it as well and learn from it.”
To do so, the Ottawa Coffee Fest will also be seeing a lineup of speakers including Julie Francoeur, executive director of Fair Trade Canada, and Ramon Lara, a Honduran coffee importer and environmentalist.
According to Burgess, “people are becoming more aware of certain social issues and wanting to make change.”
“There’s fair trade, water, climate change all involved in the coffee industry,” said Burgess. “Women in coffee is also a big issue as well because it’s a male-dominated field and I do believe there’s a shift towards people wanting to be made more aware of these things.”
After all, Seguin said, “what touches so many peoples’ lives other than coffee?”
The festival is held on Mar. 23 in the Horticulture building at Lansdowne Park.
Photo by Avanthika Anand
