Ok, so we’ve had quite a few posts here lately about the trails and tribulations at Starbucks (not to mention their many other newsworthy actions over past year, that’s you, Clover!). But of course there are other coffee businesses out there and many of them are doing things other than closing stores and laying off employees. This report out of Toronto, for example, talks about the city’s booming café scene and notes many shops are newly opened or expanding.
So if you get a chance, you might want to take off, hoser, for the Great White North, or at least Toronto.
I almost forgot! There are two kick-ass and creative coffee blogs (should be an oxymoron, i know, but i’m not even kidding eh) out of Toronto:
-http://pistabarista.blogspot.com
-http://mercuryorganic.blogspot.com
woah! okay okay… here we go again with the poor coffee-trend reporting (not you, BMag, but Toronto Life!).
I would, of course, highly recommend visiting Toronto for the cafe scene (and for many other reasons)… but if you go, please, for the love of tasty coffee and ‘fancy extras’, just ask me or another Canadian for a list before you go!!
There have been many places in Toronto that have opened in the past year, and very few of them are mentioned here!!
start with:
-Hank’s (a very good recommendation on that list)
-Crema
-Kahawa
-Wild Thing (one of the better ristrettos to be had… unfortunately closed recently)
-Mercury Organic Espresso opened a second location
-DarkHorse Espresso will soon be opening a second as well
-Manic Coffee, still going strong into their second year