Back in 2009, Detour started in a back alleyway in Dundas, Ontario with the simple idea that coffee should be more than just mindless morning fuel. Over a decade later, the company is still holding true to its mission.
“It’s really a balance between relationships, quality and transparency. We want to help build consumer awareness to these regions, farms, processing techniques and producers,” explains Ryan McCabe, Detour’s Co-Director of Coffee.
This dedication to transparency and relationships becomes apparent, as Ryan explains, “a good portion of our menu is devoted to working with the same relationships from the same farms, producers, mills and importers at origin in order to continually grow these connections and build on them year after year.”
Subscribers of The Roasters Pack can attest to this! Last December we featured Detour’s Los Girasoles, a single origin from Costa Rica with a long-standing tie to the company.
“We’ve been working with the Calderon Family for almost nine years now and have sourced coffees from so many of their farms and neighbouring farms,” Ryan furthers when asked about Detour’s Los Girasoles.
On the roasting side of things, their commitment to the process is similar to their green buying ethos:
“We’re just trying to showcase the origin, region, variety and processing and really highlight the intrinsic unique qualities of the coffee.”
You can’t achieve the perfect roast without the right equipment. Detour currently roasts on a Loring Coffee Roaster which uses convection style heat to make their profiles consistent and executable. It also happens to produce 80% lower emissions than most other coffee roasters, which Ryan notes as being important to them.
At the end of the day, however, it comes down to just one thing:
“For us, I think it really starts and ends with one word, and that’s friendly. Whether it be our coffees of the people that work at Detour, I think we just want to have people enjoy their time with us and our coffees and have an experience that they will remember. As for the future, I’m really excited to continue to grow our coffee program in new and fun ways!”
