At 10,000 cups a day and counting, Bridgehead branches out
Laura Robin, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: April 8, 2015, Last Updated: April 8, 2015 5:59 PM EDT
Ottawa’s Bridgehead chain of coffee shops has surprised industry watchers by giving the big-name coffee companies a run for their money, all while supporting small farmers internationally. But it has also surprised even its founder by becoming a major player on Ottawa’s food scene.
“I thought we were in the coffee business,” says Tracey Clark, who founded Bridgehead 15 years ago. “And then I realized, omigod, we’re in the business of feeding people. Any restaurant in the city would love to have half our sales. It’s a responsibility. It really hit me over my head.”
Bridgehead has come a long way since it opened its first shop on Richmond Road next to Mountain Equipment Co-op in 2000, offering coffee and tea and, almost as an after-thought, a limited selection of baked goods.
Now the 15 Bridgehead shops (that’s one new one each year) serve more than 10,000 cups of coffee or tea every day, but food purchases are commanding an ever-bigger piece of the pie.
“We’ve seen a definite growth in food sales — more than half of the transactions now include food,” says Clark. “People are getting their breakfasts, they’re getting their lunches, and soon they’re going to be able to get their dinner.”
When Bridgehead started, the baked goods came from other area shops, such as Thyme & Again and the French Baker. Now, everything from soup to nuts are made in-house by a keen team of 40 bakers, cooks and even juicing experts.
The energetic Clark, 51, who cycles from her Beechwood-area home to her office off Preston Street most mornings, has been driving the growth.
In 2002, she opened a central kitchen just off Wellington Street West for making everything from chorizo-studded breakfast wraps to quinoa salads, with deliveries made to the coffee houses overnight. In 2012, she opened the Roastery just off Preston Street. Last year, Bridgehead started baking its own breads at the Roastery.
And just last month, she nabbed Rob MacDonald, one of Ottawa’s top cooks, to become Bridgehead’s executive chef. Dinner served on pottery plates and with beer or wine are expected to be on the menu within weeks.
“We have this strength in food,” says Clark, who started working for the Ritz group of restaurants when she was just 20, before going on to study sciences, get an MBA and work in international development. “How do we flex that muscle more? I think we delight customers by changing things up more often and offering more new things.”
Get ready for a raft of bold moves from Bridgehead, from a doubling of the number of shops in the region to new walk-up windows. “We’ve got a nice scale so we can be nimble and try new things,” says Clark.
Here are 10 to watch:
1. Dinner is served: “If all goes well, we want to introduce dinner service on May 12″ at the Bridgehead Roastery at 130 Anderson St. (just off Preston), says Clark.
She says you’ll still go up to the cash to order and pay, but dinner will be delivered to your table, served on pottery plates and in Staub skillets.
“We’ll hold a few family-and-friends nights over a couple of weeks so we can get feedback, then start offering dinner to the public between 4 and 10 p.m.,” says Clark. “By September or October, we’ll add Beechwood, Golden, Fairmont and Wellington.”
2. … with wine and beer: Bridgehead’s bid to serve alcohol was delayed, but is expected to get the green light within weeks. It plans to have three local beers on tap: Beau’s, Beyond the Pale and Dominion City. Wines will start with ones from Niagara’s Tawse and Stratus, which are biodynamic and organic wineries.
“People are going to be blown away,” says Clark. ” You don’t have to go to a restaurant. You don’t have to go to a bar. You can just go to your neighbourhood coffee shop. We meet over coffee. We break bread. Let’s share a drink together now. It’s all about how you create an everyday community place.”
As with dinner, beer and wine offerings will start at the Preston Street Roastery and roll out to other locations.
3. Spreading to the suburbs: “Our goal is to double the number of stores in the Ottawa area, and we’re looking at the suburbs,” says Clark, who grew up in Orléans. “We’re not fast food, but we’re really good-quality food that we can do in a timely way. We want to make that available to the soccer mom.”
First up? She’s just about to sign the lease for a new Bridgehead at the corner of Greenbank and Iris, near Ikea. “We expect it to be open by July.”
4. … with walk-up windows: “We’re going to a test a walk-up window,” says Clark. “I want to crush the drive-through. I hate those.” She’s eyeing an app that would allow busy suburban families to order ahead, then pull up into preferred parking spots, sending one family member to pick up the food. The first walk-up will debut at the new Pinecrest location this summer, with the order-ahead app available by autumn.
“We’re starting to be outside our normal with that one,” Clark admits, but notes how chef Matthew Carmichael has “knocked it out the park” with his take-out window at El Camino on Elgin Street.
5. Fresh-pressed juices: After testing the waters with another Ottawa company’s products, Bridgehead recently started offering its own juices, made fresh daily by 26-year-old Alexa Spas, who had been running her own juice business under the name Flexi Lexi. Next, a new nut milk will be added to the menu, on its own and mixed with cold-brew coffee in a drink to be called the Cliff Hanger.
6. Kombucha on tap: This month, a couple of commercial kombuchas will be added to Bridgehead’s menu “just to make sure we’re not crazy,” says Clark, who confesses that she is “a total nut bar about all things fermented.” If they are well received, Bridgehead will go full steam ahead with house-brewed kombuchas, including a slightly fizzy pale one made from oolong tea and an extraordinary purple one made from blue pea tea.
“To me, this is like Champagne without the hangover,” says Clark. “It’s like a miracle beverage, full of probiotics but with very few calories or alcohol. We want to have it on tap and sell growlers of it. It’s a great alternative to alcohol.”
7. Flatbreads and pressed paninis: Since December, the Preston Street Roastery, which acts like a lab for trying out new concepts, has been selling hot flatbreads and pressed panini sandwiches.
“They’ve been super-popular,” says Clark. “We’re already selling more of these than any of our prepared sandwiches.” No wonder. They come in fabulous flavour combinations, like one that’s topped with confit roasted garlic, sliced leeks, fennel sausage, melted gruyère and chervil on a crispy, sesame-coated crust.
The recipe for those crusts? “I learned it on a baking course I took in San Francisco,” says Clark. “It’s what I use to make pizzas every Friday night for my kids.”
8. Single farmer micro-lots: Already, Bridgehead has bought coffee from 11 single farms, using it for specialty long black coffees at the Roastery, and plans to do much more of this in coming years.
“Typically this means we are buying their entire annual production, often about 20 bags,” says Clark. “In order to qualify for us as a micro-lot, the coffee has to be outstanding. We pay a premium for this coffee. It’s part of our commitment to putting more in the pockets of small-scale farmers. The evidence is beginning to mount that by creating traceability to the individual farmers and paying differentials for quality, overall quality rises, and community livelihoods improve.”
She says it’s great for consumers too, since they get to try some extraordinary coffees for only a small premium.
9. Top chef in charge: Hiring Rob MacDonald to be in charge of all the Bridgehead kitchens is a real coup, upping the culinary offerings while freeing Clark to focus on new initiatives. MacDonald, who has worked at Café Henry Burger, Maplelawn and the National Arts Centre, as well as with Jamie Kennedy and at The French Laundry, says he relishes the challenge of turning out great food on such a large scale.
“I also admire Bridgehead’s conscientious connection to the environment.”
He’s planning flavour-intense dishes such as Bourguignonne-style lamb stew topped with minted yogurt, and rabbit confit in a tomato-onion sauce with Mexican flavours of jalapeño and lime, as well as vegan options such as roasted vegetables dishes, for when the new dinners debut.
10. Moving into the mall: Bridgehead’s 17th shop is to go into the renovated Rideau Centre, opening onto Rideau Street between H&M and Simons, in 2016.
“We will have a Rideau Street entrance and a mall entrance, where the old building meets the new one, at the new entranceway across from the LRT stop,” says Clark. “We are thrilled to be a part of the Rideau streetscape.”
Bridgehead by the numbers
15 years in business
15 number of coffeehouses
305 number of employees
25 number of employees with more than 7 years service
10,000+ beverages served daily
11 single-farmer micro-lots of coffee purchased
24 varieties of fairly traded organic teas
160 litres of soup made daily
3 number of local craft breweries to be on tap at the Roastery
http://ottawacitizen.com/life/food/at-10000-cups-a-day-and-counting-bridgehead-branches-out
Prev
Linear Mode
