Here’s our favorite part, right near the end, with Trees Organic owner Doron Levy giving his impression after the interviewer bites into his cheesecake:

“That is Belgian chocolate… Now you are in heaven. For one hour at least, you can’t stop smiling.”

From April 30 to May 6, you can purchase a 200g bag of Single Origin Organic Mexico Coffee for just $6.99! This a great deal for a coffee with great flavor; this coffee boasts a dark to medium body with a unique dry chocolate taste.

These Mexican coffee beans are already fan favorites among our cafe aficionados and we know you’re going to love it. Join in the celebration at our cafes!

How times have changed.

It’s hard to believe that there was a time when coffee and café culture wasn’t part of the overall cultural bedrock of our society. According to a 2010 Ipsos Reid study on coffee consumption trends, “88% of Canadians surveyed claim that they drink at least 1 cup of coffee in a typical day, with those coffee drinkers averaging 3.2 cups per day.”

In the 1960s, a “person on the street” might not have been able to tell you the difference between an espresso and a cappuccino, or a latte and a macchiato – or for that matter, the difference between a light roast and a dark roast. Ordering a cup of coffee was utilitarian and choice was severely limited: “Cup of coffee, black.” You handed over a bit of change in your pocket and that was that.

We’ve come a long way. Consider some facts courtesy of the Ipsos Reid study and Canadian ministry of Agriculture and Agri-food:

• While coffee isn’t grown in Canada, it’s been around us for a long time. The first reference to coffee being drunk in North America was in 1668.
• With 14 billion cups consumed in Canada every year, coffee is the most popular hot beverage and the number-one foodservice beverage in Canada.
• Measured by volume, “sales of coffee accounted for about 16% of all non-alcoholic beverage sales in 2008”.
• “Outside the home or workplace, coffee drinkers enjoy an average of 3.5 cups of coffee per week in cafes and restaurants.” (Ipsos Reid)

We’re drinking a lot more coffee, but we have increasingly refined tastes. 71 percent of coffee drinkers cite flavor as their most important criteria for choosing what they drink – and naturally, that influences which cafes they go to (63 percent of coffee drinkers base their loyalty to a café based on the taste of the coffee they have on offer – which makes us feel pretty good, given the number of customers we see day after day and week after week. Clearly, our Vancouver and Richmond-based cafes are brewing up coffee people like to drink.

Got your own interesting coffee facts to share, or have an opinion on your own coffee-drinking habits? Leave a comment!

In the spirit of the Easter Egg Hunt tradition, we’d like to invite you to our Golden Bean Easter Hunt.

You can start the hunt on the Trees Organic Coffee and Roasting House website.

Find and click on three golden beans and enter our draw for a gift card and some great treats!

Cool Prizes You Could Win for finding the Golden Beans

Online Prizes include a Trees Gift Card for $25, and 2 Vouchers for 2 FREE slices of cheesecake for you and friend to enjoy at any of the Trees Organic Stores.

Rules of the Golden Bean Easter Hunt

• One entry per person.
• Contest closes on April 9, we will advise all winners by email.

May the hunt for the Golden Bean begin!

Having an Easter Celebration?
Pre-Order an Almond Marzipan Cheesecake

Easter’s a sweet time of year and we’re happy to introduce our featured April Cheesecake, Almond Marzipan: Sweet almond taste with a pleasant tang.

You can pre-order your cheesecake (Almond Marzipan, or one of our other perennial favorites like the Sin (Chocolate and Cherry), Blueberry, Mocha, Key Lime or New York Style, to make sure we have your favorite ready to take home. Just ask our staff or contact your nearest Trees café location (Granville, Gastown, Yaletown or Richmond) for pricing, availability and ordering.

The Vancouver Blogger Meetup is one group that has decided to try us out. They’re coming down to our Yaletown café on the afternoon of Saturday, March 24 (and if you’re a blogger – or prospective blogger – in Vancouver, you’ll want to check this out):

This sociable blogger meetup will be for food bloggers to mingle with the rest of the bloggeratti, while we taste some cheesecake and try three different types of special coffee flavors. Aaahhhh… Caffeinated good times.

7 Reasons To Have Your Next Meetup at Trees Café

1. Fresh, world class fair-trade organic coffee and specialty drinks. Did I mention before that we’re a coffeehouse? Mingle and schmooze amid the scents and flavors of exotic and tasty coffee beverages, from lattes and cappuccinos to espresso.
2. It’s warm and cozy. “The Gastown location has two big windows with benches and pillows which make it a nice and comfortable place to relax, read a book, or hang out with a friend,” says Trees Organic barista Irene. Between standing around in a crowded noisy bar or chilling with friendly faces in a warm coffeehouse, there’s really no comparison.
3. We’re easy to get to. Our Yaletown café is within a ten-minute walk of probably a quarter of the condos in downtown Vancouver. Our Richmond café is right outside the Richmond Library in the main rotunda of the Cultural Centre. And of course, our Gastown and Granville cafes are right in the heart of the city.
4. Awesome teas and snacks. Sure, we love our coffee, but our customers like to have a nosh as well. “They have the most amazing feta and spinach scone in the morning,” says Phoenix L. on Yelp. “Fresh out the oven with large chunks of feta, it is one of my guilty pleasures in the morning! They also have a great selection of teas, my favourite is the Jasmine green tea.”
   Trees café customer Marie M. says: “Trees is amazing, not only because the staff is friendly and knowledgeable, and they serve awesome coffee that they roast right in the shop, and that they serve REAL loose leaf teas, and that they have a great food/ pastry selection, but because they are also VEGAN friendly: they have soymilk option for lattes, a vegan power cookie (très good -my fave), a delicious vegan scone, and an ultra healthy vegan gluten-free fruit and nut bar.
5. Vancouver’s choicest cheesecake. Seriously, people voted and everything.
   Not a big fan of voting? Here’s a review from Noa G. “Over the years, I’ve tried my fair share of flavours — including classic New York (my personal fave) and “The Sin” (a devilish mix of cherry and chocolate) — and can say with complete confidence it may just be the best cheesecake I’ve tasted in the city — creamy and velvety, with tons of flavour and (depending on the type you choose) big bursts of fruit buried inside every bite.”
6. We’re friendly. We’ll greet you with a smile and do whatever we can to make your stay comfy and happy. We love our customers and serve them with pride.
7. We do coffee and cheesecake tastings and host “foodie” events. Make your social meetup extra special. Learn about the origin of the coffee you’re drinking and try some of our famous cheesecake.

Interested in holding your next meetup or social gathering at one of our café locations in Vancouver or Richmond? Contact us today about availability of seating for your group and reserve a spot

We caught up with John last week as he made an appearance on stage alongside Beth Leonard, on a night that also featured Short of Able and The Tree Shepherds. We thought it was time to find out what inspires John’s music and his thoughts on Vancouver’s music scene.

You’ve just released your third full-length album, “Wrapped Up In The Blues”. How has your music evolved and where is it headed?

The more I write, record, and promote my albums, the more I understand how to do it. Simple, but true. I know what works and what doesn’t, what shortcuts to take (and what shortcuts NOT to take).  And along the way I’ve developed a network of people who I can call on to help me make my songs be all they can be.

Any time I write I song, I still wonder how I did it. That never changes. The ‘birthing’ process remains a mystery. But once I have a good start on a melody and some sketched-in lyrics, I have a better idea of how to finish it, and by finishing, I mean the whole process of writing, capturing a well-recorded version in the studio, and finally getting it heard in a sea of music that’s available now to consumers and industry folks alike.

Where it’s headed I don’t really know. I’m still looking for a major placement, either with an established act, or on a TV/film soundtrack. That’s my current goal.

What’s different about the local music scene in Vancouver?

I’m only familiar, to some degree, with the music scenes in Nashville, Seattle, and Toronto. Compared to those three cities, Vancouver has fewer places to play. Nashville is a whole different animal of course. That city is like immersion school for singer/songwriters. Everyone, it seems, is connected with songwriting in one way or another. There’s more happening in Toronto and Seattle from what I can see. The scene is more established and Toronto, particularly, is more business-minded.

Vancouver is big on the DJ/club scene. For singer/songwriters, there are a handful of venues to play on Main St., Broadway, and 4th Ave. A few downtown, and that’s about it. Most are noisy. Trees is one of the few exceptions where a performer can expect to be heard by an attentive audience.

What’s the experience like performing close-up with a coffee-house audience?

You can see their faces. You can tell who is listening, and of those, who is really getting into the particular song you’re playing. It’s daunting in a way, making eye contact is not usually what you do when you’re in a dimly-lit bar with a mass of stage lights shining on you. In a coffee house setting, a more intimate, personal exchange takes place. When the place is dead quiet, (other than the hiss and banging of the espresso machine of course!), and you know they’re with you, it’s the best feeling I know. I would rather play to six attentive people, than dozens of noisy bar patrons. I’ve experienced both, and I know I’m not the only performer who would say that, in spite of what the pay difference might be.

What’s your most memorable experience performing or listening to a performance at Trees’ music nights?

Last week comes to mind. Listening to the four-piece band called The Tree Shepherds. The lyrics and groove reminded me, at times, of Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks album, and of Bob Dylan’s best work, and they just created so many musical moments that I was really floored. We’ve had Dan Mangan play there. Hannah Georgas. International finger picking champion Don Alder, to name a few notables. I would say about 10 per cent of the acts that play there are in that special group of super-talented performers who you know will go on to bigger things.

Which local music acts that have inspired your own musical development?

I’m inspired by the acts that take chances musically. Either in the words or in the music. I like quirkiness, when it works. And when it doesn’t work, well that’s not the end of the world. I respect the acts that take themselves seriously too. By that I mean they’ve taken the time to develop their own sound, and they’ve worked on the business side of things too. They have professionally produced CDs, they have put together extensive touring schedules, and they’ve learned how to create music that can really touch me.

Check out John Pippus and other great local musicians at our Music Nights every Thursday and Friday starting at 8 pm

There’s a great scene from the delightful film, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World that portrays very well the gulf of understanding between tea drinkers and, um, people who don’t drink tea (yet):

Ramona V. Flowers: What kind of tea do you want?

Scott Pilgrim: There’s more than one kind?

Ramona V. Flowers: We have blueberry, raspberry, ginseng, sleepy time, green tea, green tea with lemon, green tea with lemon and honey, liver disaster, ginger with honey, ginger without honey, vanilla almond, white truffel, blueberry chamomile, vanilla walnut, constant comment and… Earl Grey.

Scott Pilgrim: Did you make some of those up?

Don’t get us wrong. We enjoy our coffee. Latte, espresso or just a regular drip cup of coffee gets us going in the morning and helps us get through the rest of the day. But tea takes a backseat to no vector of caffeine and health benefits.

Here are some of our favorite exotic kinds of tea:

Moroccan Madness Tea. Black tea with a refreshing and invigorating touch of Moroccan peppermint. This one’s tasty. We could have called it our Moroccan Insanely Awesome Tea, but we wanted to keep the M-M thing going.

Sencha Kyoto Cherry Rose Tea. A blend of high quality green tea, sweet cherry blossom and morning rose flavour. It’s like you just woke up in a Japanese garden. Serenity now.

Vanilla Rooibos Tea (herbal). Sweet vanilla notes. Mmmmm. Vanilla. Enriched with nutrients such as iron, potassium, calcium and fluoride. And there’s no caffeine with this beverage, so this is a good, aromatic tea for when you just want to mellow out.

What’s your favorite kind of tea? Take our poll and let us know.

Take Our Poll and Win Tickets to Taste BC

Trees Organic Coffee and Roasting House is taking part in the Taste BC Fundraiser for BC Children’s Hospital. Take a quick poll on Facebook and you could win tickets to the big event! We’re giving away two sets of two tickets worth $100 each. (One entry per person).

Take our Facebook poll and enter to win tickets!

What is Taste BC?

At Taste BC, you can experience BC wine, beer and spirits and delicious food from our best local restaurants. You’ll be entertained by live music. There are great door prizes and a silent auction that features great BC products and destination packages. It’s going to be a great night – and you could be there.

Taste BC Event Details

Four Seasons Hotel

791 Georgia Street, Vancouver

Tuesday January 24, 4:30-7:30 pm

What is Does Taste BC Support?

Taste BC is a great local event to benefit one of British Columbia’s most vital medical institutions, which treats about 700 sick and injured children every day. Taste BC has raised $186,336 for BC Children’s Hospital’s Oak Tree Clinic so far. On its busiest day, BC Children’s Hospital treats almost 1,100 individual children.

This is a great cause and as a local Vancouver company, we’re proud to take part. We’re looking forward to this special evening featuring some of the province’s most well known food and beverage companies, raising funds for an important facility.

Interested in bringing your friends to Taste BC?

Get more information about the event at the official Taste BC website. You can also purchase tickets for Taste BC from event sponsors Liberty Wine Merchants at their locations.

Buy tickets for Taste BC at Liberty Wine Merchants Locations

This organization is the only francophone non-profit in Vancouver serving those in need of housing, legal aid, employment, social intervention and mental health supports. Thanks again to everyone who volunteered to help make the holiday season in Vancouver a great time for everyone.