JJ Bean Coffee Roasters

Our Story

We believe people have intrinsic value and seek to honour our coffee producers, our staff, and our customers by only serving the freshest, best tasting coffee possible. To this end, we source the highest quality green coffee and roast it in small batches daily, guided by one principle: the best taste wins.

The Neate family has been roasting coffee in Vancouver for four generations. In 1996, John Neate Jr. (JJ) established JJ Bean Coffee Roasters to honour people through great coffee, food, spaces, and service.

Over + Above

JJ Bean’s Over + Above program exists because the farmers who produce the coffee we enjoy so much also happen to live in some of the poorest areas of the world. While we are committed to always paying excellent prices for excellent coffee, we do more to make a positive difference in coffee growing countries over and above our basic responsibility as coffee roasters.

All administration costs for Over + Above initiatives are covered by JJ Bean.

Environmental Responsibility

We are committed to being an environmentally friendly coffee roaster.

In 2009 we completely redesigned our Vancouver roasting facility for optimum emissions control. To eliminate smoke, our roaster has its own individual emissions control unit, which converts the smoke into thermal energy. We also also use a computerized control system which we developed in partnership with an emissions control manufacturer. This system controls our afterburner so the level of activity matches the quantity of smoke produced by the roaster. This means our emissions control system uses no more energy than it requires for its task. Since these changes, we have reduced our thermal energy output by roughly 30%.

In 2017 we introduced new Biotre coffee bags that are biodegradable and recyclable. Biotrē Film is made from 60% (by weight) renewable wood pulp. The wood pulp portion is biodegradable. Third party testing confirmed that nearly all of the wood pulp portion will disintegrate into healthy compost over 84 days in a backyard, home composting environment. The remaining 40% (by weight) of the bag is Polyethylene (PE) with an additive that is designed to make it disintegrate significantly faster than standard plastic. Biotre is best disposed by placing it in a privately managed compost pile where the PE layer and one-way degassing valve and tin-tie can be removed manually and disposed. When a portion or all of Biotre is properly disposed with regular trash, its impact on the environment will be much less compared to a standard plastic/foil material.