There have been a few examples of crisis turning into opportunity since COVID-19 shut the world down. Businesses such as Zoom and Microsoft's Meetings video conferencing, the social distance and ease of shopping on Amazon, and more locally, businesses like Bugwood Bean have used the pandemic as a time to re-evaluate their business strategy.

Before COVID-19 shut down most cafes, Bugwood Bean had planned to become a wholesaler for local restaurants and cafes. That all changed when businesses were threatened with inevitable shut downs, so new ventures were stopped almost entirely.

Bugwood Bean owners Nick Meyer (and most recent Smithers town councillor Mika Meyer) used a government grant through the Northern Development Initiative Trust to fund 80 per cent of a consultant agency to help them open up their business beyond retail. That consultation created processes in their business to start training other cafes and roasters' staff, creating a fun, "team-building" way to learn to make the perfect espresso.

Nick Meyer told CICK News that "they couldn't just service cafes and specialty coffees, so we opened ourselves up to be able to roast any kind of coffee and any volume [...] to connect to any community through coffee."

The communities Bugwood works with are all over the North of British Columbia. They support different camp suppliers and they deliver the coffee to camps all over the North, and they also supply equipment to a "handful of different equipment companies all over the North", and as mentioned, training new cafes' staff to be a well-oiled machine.

Listen to CICK's full interview with Nick Meyer in the audio file below.