Montreal Coffee Pioneer Saint-Henri Branches Out With Bold New Projects

Jean-François Leduc, the owner of Saint Henri micro torréfacteur, opened a gorgeous new café in Jean-Talon Market earlier this summer and has plans to do the same much farther afield. Quebec City will be the beneficiary of a new Café Saint-Henri, a first for the provincial capital, sometime over the next six weeks. Barista Julie Audet, who won a Natrel-sponsored latte art competition this past weekend in Montreal, will helm the project.

Leduc has his hands full beyond coffee. Artisanal sodas, for one. Henri Sodas, appropriately, is the name of Leduc's new business. Inaugural flavours include root beer, spruce, and kola. Leduc's fizzy drink foray substantiates a small-batch soda trend in Montreal, what with recent new players like Bec Cola and 1642.

Henri Sodas

Café Saint-Henri recently made the news when Leduc balked at a hefty rent hike at his original coffee shop. The third wave coffee pioneer wrote on Facebook this past June that "a Tim Hortons opened down the street from Café Saint-Henri. Unrelated to our coffee shop, I am told. Except there's this: the rent paid by Tim Hortons is now the barometer for the renewal of our lease ... and we will not be able to pay rent at a Tim Hortons level." Leduc subsequently decided to move his first Saint-Henri coffee shop elsewhere—rumour has it that the new locale will indeed still be in Saint-Henri, at 661 Rose de Lima. Fingers crossed.