RELAY Coffee Roasters: the story of a piping hot Hamilton staple
- Michael Kras
- 13 Dec 2021
When it comes to our city’s countless small businesses, RELAY Coffee Roasters stands out for feeling quintessentially Hamiltonian.
Founded by husband and wife team Jason and Rachel Hofing under the original name Red Hill Coffee Trade, RELAY Coffee has since grown into one of Hamilton’s most prominent small-batch coffee providers, and one of very few local spots that also roasts its own beans in-house.
For Jason and Rachel, who remain the engine under the whole operation to this day, the seeds of RELAY Coffee came out of a shared interest in launching a business that puts both localness and international impact at its forefront.
“RELAY Coffee Roasters began in 2008 after years of wanting to be more involved in a local community and wishing to have an impact on the global community and a rising fair-trade movement,” says Jason.
“My previous job intersected with an independent coffee roaster in Kingston. This is where I began to make connections, learn the art of roasting, and fall in love with coffee. Given that we have family and friends in the Hamilton/Niagara region, it was time to make Hamilton home.”
Jason and Rachel’s loves for coffee and for Hamilton continue to be the driving force behind RELAY, and it’s easy to see why Hamilton has fallen in love with RELAY right back. Their fair-trade, ethically-sourced coffee is roasted and brewed with skill and passion in equal measure, but with a local identity and vibe that feels approachable and completely unpretentious; just like the city they call home.
Upon launching officially as Red Hill Coffee Trade almost 14 years ago, Jason and Rachel got their humble start by providing local coffee shops, restaurants, and retailers with their coffee beans before opening their very own coffee bar at a stand in the Hamilton Farmers’ Market in 2011; a spot where RELAY Coffee has continued to thrive ever since.
The popularity was so great that it wasn’t long before the Hofings had set their sights on the Hamilton Mountain and opened a second coffee bar – their first in a dedicated storefront – on Concession Street in 2013, featuring handmade coffee and espresso, some select homemade pastries, and a cozy seating area.
Shortly after that came the name change. Though the business’ roots come from its roastery in the Red Hill Business Park, Jason and Rachel wanted a cleaner, simpler name that wasn’t so tied to one hyper-specific location; especially given their plans to open further coffee bars in various areas of Hamilton, or the potential to one day move their roastery.
Inspired by idea of collaboration and teamwork “from farmer to roaster to customer,” as well as Hamilton’s own roots as Canada’s first city to receive widespread electrical power, the fitting name RELAY Coffee was born.
After a few years settling into their new moniker, plans were underway to turn RELAY Coffee’s duo of locations into a trio by opening another dedicated café space in the downtown core in 2019. However, a substantial spike in rent by their new landlord on Concession threw a wrench into the plans, leaving Jason and Rachel with little choice to but close the doors of their beloved Hamilton Mountain location and pour even more resource into their forthcoming downtown coffee shop on King William Street.
“Moving from Concession to King William was a substantial change for us. We’d originally hoped to operate out of all three locations – the Market, Concession, and King William – and allow each one to have a vibe that matched the location,” explains Rachel.
“King William was a momentous undertaking as we now had the facilities to seat more people, serve food beyond our baking, and exist in the heart of downtown Hamilton. It was daunting at times, but also gave us a creative outlet to design the café we had been dreaming of.”
That downtown coffee bar, located at 27 King William Street in a large storefront that previously held local fixtures like Homegrown Hamilton and Rust City Brewery, opened in May 2019 as a large and inviting café ripe for community connection. Its central placement right in the beating heart of the city makes it feel like the space this deeply, richly local coffee roaster was just waiting to find and call home.
The extra space also allowed RELAY to expand its offerings well beyond what they’ve been able to support in the past, including a full kitchen where they now whip up salads, sandwiches, fresh waffles (with new savoury waffle options and breakfast sandwiches in the works), and a wide range of ever-changing baked goods.
Then came the next big hurdle to overcome: less than a year after the King William coffee bar opened, the pandemic sent RELAY Coffee and virtually every other Hamilton business into a whirlwind of uncertainty, leaving Jason and Rachel to find ways of adapting their operations to wildly unpredictable times.
With the King William café forced to shut its doors through much of the past year and a half or at most remain open for takeaway only, tables were left bare and a space that had quickly cultivated a vibrant local community was suddenly robbed of its day-to-day comings and goings, its chorus of conversational hums and tip-tapping on laptops.
Despite those immense blows, RELAY Coffee found new ways to keep moving forward; including leaning further into e-commerce and launching hands-on delivery of their coffee beans and other retail products to local doorsteps.
“Truthfully, the last year has been an enormous challenge in multiple ways, and our main goal is to continue to roast delicious coffee and continue to be a part of Hamilton,” adds Jason.
Nowadays, the state of the pandemic is feeling a bit more optimistic, and RELAY has been able to reopen their King William space to the local community and even plan some fun and unique events including their brand new RELAY Record Review: a charmingly simple concept launching in full in 2022 that allows café patrons to bring their favourite vinyl to the shop to play and share with the other guests.
That’s not to say that RELAY isn’t still facing its share of challenges, from the rising cost of supplies to the fact that large swaths of people are still working from home, naturally limiting the daily foot traffic at RELAY’s Farmers’ Market and King William locations.
But you’d be hard-pressed to find a small business that knows the meaning of the word ‘grind’ better than RELAY Coffee Roasters, and their robust commitment to serving great coffee while serving their local community is sure to stay piping hot for many, many years to come.
“It’s been a difficult time for many in our industry and we have continued to do everything we can to be creative and serve our guests and customers,” says Rachel. “We’re deeply grateful to everyone who chooses to purchase their coffee from our family business.”
Read more about RELAY Coffee Roasters on their website, and follow them on social media here.
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