Our shiny new website has been up for about two weeks now, and all seems stable and happy. So, it's time to celebrate and spread the word. We're going to run a simple retweet promotion. Here's what to do:

1. Follow us on twitter.
2. Be one of the first 50 people to tweet this message:

Spread the word about the new http://transcendcoffee.com and get $5 off your coffee order. Details: http://ow.ly/1sR4x

And we'll DM you with a special discount code for $5 off a coffee order over $30 (that usually means two pounds) on transcendcoffee.com. The only restriction is that you must be a resident of Canada or the USA to participate.

Happy tweeting!

If you’re a regular to the site or the blog you’ll notice that things have changed. We’ve just launched an all new, re-built-from-the-ground-up website. We’re quite thrilled that it’s finally here and we sincerely hope that it greatly improves your online experience, whether you’re buying coffee or equipment online, or looking to learn more about coffee.

Here’s just a few of the new features on the new site:

• one-page checkout

• customer login - create an account and never have to input your address or other details again

• ability to re-order based on your order history

• coupon codes! We have lots of ideas about how to make awesome use of these. Let’s just say it might be beneficial to follow @transcendcoffee on the twitter or subscribe to our newsletter.

• education section - there’s now one page where all the podcasts live, plus you can purchase and sign up for courses online. We’ll be expanding our course offerings and online education soon.

• integrated blog - our blog is now right on our website - no more navigating to a different url. But, you use a feed reader, you do need to re-subscribe.

• twitter sidebar - see what people are saying about Transcend Coffee

• and seriously lots and lots of other features. Too many to list.

I really feel like we have a world-class website. We have one of the best ecommerce systems available anywhere, with a clean, custom design.

I’d like togive a huge shout out to our developer, Chris Martyniuk, for putting in a crazy, insane, over-the-top, way-more-than-expected effort. He made two very different systems (Joomla and Interspire) talk to each other seamlessly and built an incredible site loaded with tools on the back end that will make my job as a marketer much easier. If you have a web project or need some custom software developed, seriously talk to Chris, he can handle it.

The lovely layout design for the site was done by the talented, friendly and always charming Woodward Design. The Woodwardians have been working on our new packaging and other marketing collateral soon to be making their debut.

Please let us know what you think of the site, good or bad, we want to know. You can comment here or send us an email.

One of the amazing things about my job is that I get to do something new each and every day.  Seriously, running a business means that you do something new and challenging today, that I have never done before.

OK, a few house keeping items to let you all know about. Firstly, congrats to Jeff Johnson for winning the first Edmonton Slow Food Grilled Cheese Olympic (Classic category), well done. It was a fun event and I know Chad and Thea put a lot of work into this event.

We are launching our new website tomorrow evening (Tuesday March 16). We hope this switch goes well, but the experienced side of us knows that this is unlikely to go without a hitch. So please be patient with us these next couple of days. As the name servers take hold of the redirect, some of you might see the old site, while others the new site. Hopefully by Thursday, all should be well.

On Thursday we are planning on switching the blog over to the new site too. So if you have an RSS feed to our blog, it will be going dark on Thursday, and you will have to re-subscribe to our new blog feed from the new website. We will redirect the old blog url to the new site, but we can’t do this for RSS feeds. We thank you in advance for your patience on this, and hopefully by week’s end we will have everything ironed out.

Well, it is the 12th of March, and things are moving forward, albeit slowly. Actually, in terms of sourcing all of things required for the new coffee bar, we are in pretty good shape. The chairs, tables, lights, counter tops, and millwork have all been ordered. We took possession of our POS system today so that new staff can begin training on it. Our eight new baristas started their training yesterday and will continue to train so that all of them are bar ready by the 12th of April. I am heading to the SCAA on the 13th of April, so we are planning to have a soft opening sometime in the following week. Stay tuned for more info as it develops. It looks like we will plan a grand opening sometime in May, once we have had 3 - 4 weeks of run time to properly work out the kinks. We are all excited, and a bit exhausted at the process so far. Props have to go to Bill, Candy and Chuck for their great work so far, and Kim our designer has been doing backflips for us since she got home from the US. As per usual my goto staff at Transcend have been doing stellar work in getting prepped for the big day. So, in short, we are getting closer, and we will let you know a more concrete opening date as soon as we can. Thanks for being patient along with all the rest of us.

It is true, we have been hiring a lot of new staff for T2. This however, is a call for a dedicated individual who is in love with coffee, drinking it, rolling in it, wearing it, dreaming about it… you get the picture, to come and work at the mothership. Previous experience as a barista is always a plus, but if you haven’t had the chance yet to get behind the bar, but have always dreamt of it, then drop us a line.

We are looking for someone who can do both opening and closing shifts, and is also available for some Saturday shifts (which by the way, is the craziest and most fun day to work at Transcend). So, let me reiterate, you must be crazy about the dark nectar that we all work with every day. If you are, we can promise you entry into a great team of people who work hard and play hard too. Interested folk can send inquiries or resumes to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Chad spent quite a few hours reorganizing the roastery this weekend. We had a chat last week where he indicated that there was room for improvement with the current set-up in the roastery, and wanted to tweak the way it was set-up in order to both create a better work space and make the roastery more efficient. For me, this was a no-brainer and I set him free.

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