Coffee

I'm in lower mainland BC, Canada; my go-to in the Vancouver region are Luna, House of Funk, and Pallet.

Luna is an extraordinarily talented, relatively tiny, roaster run out of Langley region that specializes in very unusual, weird, or distinctive coffees. They do things that are an easy sell for the Specialty coffee person into the more out-there side of things and the combination of their sourcing talent and knowledge, and the talent and effort put into their roasting, has them consistently put out very high quality 'niche'-appeal lots, typically with short shelving time and fairly quick stock rotation.

House of Funk is a brewery/roastery located in North Van that roasts a lot of 'funky' beans. The roasting isn't as innovative or technical as Luna, but their sourcing is very much focused on the weird and their lineup is consistently unusual and very interesting coffees. Unrelated to the coffee, their packaging design is IMO second to none, the coffee generally comes in a can with art on, and some of them are cool enough I keep them long after the contents are done.

Pallet is wobbling furiously between "very accessible" and "very innovative" in a surprisingly graceful balancing act. They have a product line devoted to interesting third-wave coffees and unconventional processing or lots, they're the biggest and the most financially successful of the three and they do leverage that to buy absolutely fantastic greens and bizarre microlots on spec in a way that someone smaller might not be able to gamble on. At the same time they bring third-wave quality and attention to detail to roasting some very accessible, very "normal" coffees that are still excellent. This is my go-to when I'm trying to show 'normal' people what third-wave coffee can offer them.