JJ Bean - Yaletown

Business Description

A hidden gem of community in Yaletown's tech district. Our spirited baristas make delicious drinks, whether you're on your way to work or just strolling past the neighbourhood's historic warehouses. Feel at home with a 'spro, freshly baked croissant, or house-made sandwich.

Voted Vancouver's Best year after year, every JJ Bean café is a space where people connect and communities are served, with intentional (and award-winning) designs that honour each neighbourhood’s unique heritage... and really, really good coffee.

About Us

The Neate family has been roasting coffee in Vancouver for four generations. In 1996, John Neate Jr. (JJ) established JJ Bean Coffee Roasters to honour people through the best coffee, food, spaces, and service possible.

We believe all people have intrinsic value and seek to honour everyone — our coffee producers, our staff, and our customers — by only serving the freshest, best tasting coffee. To this end, we source the highest quality green coffee and roast it in small batches daily, guided by one principle: the best taste wins.

Our Coffee

Sourcing

We purchase the best tasting coffee regardless of its certifications and we always pay well above Fair Trade prices on every coffee we purchase. The world’s best coffees are known as specialty coffee and specialty coffee is purchased based on quality. We do not use “Direct Trade” terminology because we do not want to discredit the crucial role that exporters and importers play in the specialty coffee industry.

Third-party verification plays an important role in coffee, and the most common certifications include Organic, Fair Trade, Rainforest Alliance, and Smithsonian Bird Friendly. JJ Bean has intentionally included both Fair Trade (through Fairtrade Canada) and Organic (through Fraser Valley Organic Producers Association) over the years. At the same time, the specific meaning of these certifications is often misunderstood. So over the last three decades, we have developed an approach that we believe makes the most sense:

First, we purchase coffee based on its quality and have remained committed to paying above Fair Trade prices since we moved away from that certification in 2008. Last year we began phasing out organic certification and in early 2025, we will no longer offer a separate line of Certified Organic coffees. This means Railtown and Decaf will no longer be Certified Organic going forward. Rather than placing focus on certifications, we have chosen to tell the stories of the producers behind our high-quality coffees and also give credit to the critical role of importers.

Second, the coffee we enjoy would not exist without the hard work of the farmers who grow it. The farmers who produce the best coffee in the world also happen to live in some of the poorest areas of the world. While we are committed to always paying producers excellent prices for exceptional coffee, we believe we can do more to make a positive difference in the coffee growing countries over and above our basic responsibilities. We support making life better in coffee producing countries through our Over + Above initiatives, like Roasters for Wells. Click here for information about Over & Above, JJ Bean’s locally and globally focused charitable program.

Roasting

Our roasting style is characterized by a balance between complexity and drinkability. Every coffee requires individual care and attention to coax out its inherent character and harmonize acidity with sweetness.

Flavour

Every coffee is unique and requires individual care and attention to coax out its inherent character and to harmonize its levels of sweetness and acidity. Our single origin coffees are generally roasted to the end of first crack, producing a light roast coffee that boasts both complexity and balance. We aim to present coffees with defined origin characteristics paired with a high level of drinkability.

All our coffees are initially sample-roasted in a vintage Jabez-Burns four-barrel roaster inside of our Commercial Drive café. After that, it’s batch-roasted to order in a vintage 90kg cast-iron Probat drum roaster at our Powell Street café.