A lot of places may claim to offer unique products, but The Bean Stop in Eau Claire Market is the real deal. Owned by Ken Cutler, this is the only place in North America where you can get wild civet coffee – you may know it better by the name in all the headlines when Ken first brought it to Calgary in 2010: “cat poop coffee”. It is made from the seeds of coffee cherries ingested by the civet, a cat-like mammal indigenous to Southeast Asia. Workers sift through the civet’s droppings to extract the seeds and then process them. “We put it on the world map,” says Ken. “We were vetted by the World Society for the Protection of Animals and they confirmed that we were the only source in North America.”
Wild civet coffee is the type of product that exemplifies the focus of The Bean Stop since Ken took over in 2001 – bringing in unusual, rare and exotic coffees and teas from around the world. Coffee and tea aficionados can come for authentic Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee – which many consider the best in the world – or any of the more than 60 coffee varieties and 135 loose leaf teas Ken has in stock.
