Joe on the go

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/06/2023 (1117 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Sarah Smythe wasn’t intending to stop for a cuppa joe when she and her daughter headed out for a leisurely stroll through their Ridgewood West neighbourhood early last week.

Her plan changed the second she noticed a sidewalk sandwich board advertising “fresh coffee up ahead.” Moments later, she was enjoying an Americano purchased from Knapsack Coffee, a mobile coffee shop that offers a mix of hot and cold beverages expertly brewed within the cosy confines of a fully restored 1978 Boler camper-trailer.

“There really isn’t anywhere around here to go for coffee — the closest Tim’s is probably 15 minutes away — so when I spotted the sign and then the trailer, I was like, how great is this?” Smythe says, before continuing on her way.

Quinton Anderson is Knapsack Coffee’s owner and head barista. The 36-year-old chuckles before responding to a chicken-or-egg, which-came-first query: the Boler, a lightweight, fibreglass contraption that was invented by Winnipegger Ray Olecko in 1968, or the notion of a café-on-wheels?

When he first started thinking about a coffee house of his own, he definitely pictured himself running a bricks-and-mortar location, he says, standing inside the orange-and-yellow painted trailer, where his six-foot-one frame has roughly an inch of available headroom. The idea never seemed feasible, though, as he was employed full-time as a paramedic.

“Then, three years ago, my partner Breanne and I went to look at a Boler for sale on Kijiji,” he continues, noting he was somewhat familiar with the company’s colourful history but has since learned more about the made-in-Manitoba success story, thanks to fellow Boler owners who are curious about his operation.

“It wasn’t much to look at, inside or out, but my thinking was, how cool would it be to convert it into a coffee shop that could be open around my schedule?”

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Anderson pounded double-doubles “like they were water” while undergoing his emergency medical services training. By the time he graduated, he was taking his order strictly black.

“My feeling became, if it’s great coffee you don’t really need anything else,” says Anderson, who grew up in Charleswood, where he remembers his parents seemingly having a pot of Folgers percolating 24-7.

In 2017 his partner moved to Toronto for work purposes. He travelled there fairly often during the two years she was away. During one visit, he signed up for a Level 1 barista course taught at Pilot Coffee Roasters, which had become one of his favourite haunts there. He went in believing he knew a thing or two about coffee. He left feeling he hadn’t even scratched the surface.

Upon his return to Winnipeg, he invested in various pieces of equipment, among which was a high-end espresso machine. He enjoyed experimenting with it so much that in January 2020 he switched from full-time to part-time as a paramedic, expressly to accept a part-time position at Modern Electric Lunch, a breakfast-and-lunch spot on Main Street where coffee is a key part of the goings-on.

“I was learning an absolute ton there and it really was a labour of love going to work. Then COVID hit and I was suddenly stuck at home, bored like everybody else.”

In order to continue sharpening his skills, Anderson “opened” what he cheekily dubbed the Quarantine Café in April 2020. A few evenings a week, he accepted coffee orders from friends and family. He then rolled out of bed bright and early the next morning to prepare everybody’s order from scratch, before placing the lot in an insulated container to remain hot during the delivery phase.

He didn’t make a dime off the venture. Rather, people paid him $2 per cup, with the proceeds going directly to Winnipeg Harvest. Still, he got such a bang out of what he was doing that he promised himself then and there to build upon the concept “for real,” once pandemic-related restrictions eased.

Like he mentioned earlier, he came up with the idea for a travelling coffee shop after he and Breanne spotted the for-sale Boler in the fall of 2020. While friends of his who own Premier Design Build spent close to 10 months gutting and retrofitting the interior to match what he was picturing in his head, he stayed busy settling on a name for the biz. When he was a kid he called backpacks “knapsacks,” he says, and felt that was on brand with the camper-trailer setting.

Additionally, he and Breanne taste-tested dozens of different coffee beans.

“I eventually settled on Drumroaster Coffee, which is from Vancouver Island,” he says. “The first time I tried it was when I was visiting my sister in Nanaimo, and I felt it fit perfectly with what I was trying to do. Not only do the owners roast great coffee, they’re super pleasant to deal with and pay farmers fairly and treat them respectfully.”

Knapsack Coffee, which is powered by a 12,000-watt generator, made its official debut on Thanksgiving weekend 2021 at Victoria Beach, where Anderson’s family has a cottage. He set up in the parking lot, outside the restricted area, and spent six hours Saturday and Sunday tending to 30-minute lineups. That caused him to think, hmm, he was definitely onto something.

Last summer was Knapsack Coffee’s first full season on the road. Business came largely from private companies and offices that hired him to park outside their premises to serve free coffee to their employees and customers. He was also booked for a fair number of wedding receptions. To his great surprise, there was almost always a longer queue for mochas and lattes than for beer and wine.

Also, give him a minute and he’ll show you a photo of himself taken with actor Lea Thompson. The Back to the Future star stopped by for a beverage when he was servicing the set of the locally shot CTV series The Spencer Sisters, last August.

This summer is shaping up to be equally busy, if not more so, he reports. He was “absolutely blown away” by the reception his setup received at The Forks on June 4, where he was a registered vendor for the Pride Winnipeg Festival. Ditto last weekend when he was invited to situate the trailer outside the Low Life Barrel House, a brewery and winery at 398 Daly St. N.

“And when I’m not doing those type of events, I’m always keeping my eyes open for random spots around the city where there’s a good chance of drawing people in,” he says, mentioning that like conventional food trucks, he has a parking permit and the necessary health licences.

“I do have an ongoing relationship with the Beer Can (1 Granite Way) in the evenings, but there’s a high-volume bike lane close to there that I try getting to at least once a week, to serve coffee to cyclists on their way to the office, first thing in the morning.”

By the way, if you think Anderson, who has also constructed a full-service espresso cart for the winter months, is the sort of coffee snob who’s going to judge you for requesting a triple-triple, think again.

“One hundred per cent, that is never going to happen,” he says, adjusting the brim of his ball cap. “We want to be a coffee shop where people feel comfortable approaching us to ask what this or that is. A lot say ‘would you be insulted if I asked for …’ and I’m like, ‘no, never.’ We want everybody to have their drink, exactly the way they want it.”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca