Cape Breton’s Bungalow Beans goes from backyard BBQ to bricks and mortar

How a Cape Breton man went from roasting coffee beans on his BBQ to opening up a storefront in Sydney, N.S.

Steve Smith’s journey as a barista has come a long way from the days when he was barbecuing his beans in his backyard in Coxheath, N.S.

“I started roasting inside a stainless-steel drum roaster that was inside of a barbecue grill,” said Smith, who is the owner of Bungalow Beans.

From there, Smith started selling at the local farmers market.

Eventually, he hit the road and slung coffee out of a vintage camper that was more than a half-century old.

These days, however, he has parked his product in downtown Sydney where he has set up his shop in a well-known building called The Whale House.

“It’s a beautiful space,” Smith said. “There’s other food vendors here throughout the week. I absolutely love it. The people are superior. I love it here.”

While selling out of his own space was years in the making, Smith admitted business has been a bit of a ‘slow drip’ the first couple of months he was open. It’s also a time when plenty of small businesses are struggling.

“I think I picked the best and worst time to start a café,” Smith said. “It’s downtown Sydney. It’s the dead of winter. It’s very quiet and people say that that’s the worst time to start. It’s very slow but in reality, this is what you need to see.”

While Smith and his new café are now reasonably rooted in downtown Sydney, his journey to becoming a Cape Bretoner goes back decades.

“I’m from Orlando, FL,” said Smith. “I was in the U.S. Navy for 20 years and we actually left the Kingdom of Bahrain – which is in the news right now, and you can see the base that I was stationed on – and we retired from the military and came here to Cape Breton where my wife is from.”

Happy to call Cape Breton home, Smith loves keeping busy.

He also works as a real estate agent but finds time to run Bungalow Beans as a one-person show Monday to Friday.

Smith remains hopeful that with a bit more growth, he might get closer to his ultimate vision as an entrepreneur.

“Where I can get a couple of employees and finally have my own cafe someplace”, Smith said. “That’s my goal.”

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