Sure Thing

About the Coffee

The coffee in Sure Thing comes from a small group of producers in the El Cielito and El Cedral regions of Honduras, farming between 1,500 and 1,800 meters. The group includes Margarito, Kevin, Roselis, and Evin Herrera, Wilmer, Eduard, and Donaldo Dubon, Antonio Martinez, and Pedro Moreno, among others. They grow Pacas, Bourbon, and Yellow Catuaí across small family plots concentrated in the same mountain corridor.

El Cielito was the first coffee region Phil visited when he traveled to Honduras in 2011. The area has a long track record, with several farms placing in the top 10 of the Cup of Excellence multiple times. The coffees are fully washed using traditional fermentation tanks, a process that involves soaking the depulped coffee in water to remove the remaining fruit layer before drying.

Sure Thing is built from many individual micro-lots, some under 200 pounds of green coffee each. Phil cups them separately and groups lots by growing area and varietal so the bean density stays consistent across the blend. That consistency matters at the roaster: beans with mismatched densities roast unevenly, which pulls the cup in directions nobody wants. Combining complementary lots this way also produces a more balanced result than any single tiny lot would on its own, and gives the coffee a longer window on the menu than a single small lot ever could.

About Phil & Sebastian

Phil Robertson and Sebastian Sztabzyb co-founded Phil & Sebastian in Calgary in 2007. Phil came in with an engineering background and built a custom roasting machine from scratch, writing the software that runs it. Sebastian's focus has been on the business and cafe side, while also traveling to Central and South America to buy green coffee directly from producers.

Both founders travel to origin to source coffee themselves. Phil covers Africa; Sebastian covers Latin America. They pay above the industry average for green coffee and put money into projects on the ground at origin, which is how relationships with producers like those in El Cielito get built and maintained over time.

"Phil & Sebastian is a favourite of mine from my time in Calgary. My wife swore by their "Hartmann Honey" beans, and we stocked it (or, maybe "hoarded" is a better word) for as long as they sold it. It feels like a 'full circle' moment to finally have them in our rotation."

- Dean, Director of Coffee