By Francis Moran
I have been an enthusiast of the Clover coffee brewing machine ever since the new Bridgehead café a few blocks from our ByWard Market offices opened up a year or so ago, featuring one of these shiny devices that brew a perfect single cup of steaming hot Java exactly to my taste and specification. I’ve become so regularly devoted that my morning cuppa is often being brewed before I even get to the cash to place my order!
And now, courtesy of a Wired magazine article on how Starbucks has gobbled up the maker of this impressive machine so it can have it all to itself, I learn that Ottawa’s Bridgehead, with two of the roughly 200 machines in the market at the time of the Starbuck’s takeover, represents fully one per cent of all the Clovers anywhere in the world, and will continue to hold that share of all Clovers not owned by the bean-burning Goliath of the coffee trade.
It’s a coup for my favourite coffee shop coming on top of this innovative chain’s already laudable business approach that sees it support a broad range of community initiatives here in Ottawa and buy most of its fair-trade, shade-grown beans directly from small grower-owned cooperatives throughout the world.
