If you’ve been to Downtown Guelph lately, chances are you’ve noticed -if not enjoyed- many of the local coffee shops that have found their home in the downtown core. Planet Bean, The Red Brick Cafe, The Joint Cafe and Coco Latte are among a vast number of Downtown’s fantastic offerings. Each feature their own unique blends and stylings from cappuccinos to espressos and everything in between. They also showcase delicious menu offerings from light lunches to rich desserts.

What’s incredible, is that for all the fantastic choices Guelphites have for cup of coffee, the competition downtown continues to grow. With all the development coming to downtown, will that trend continue? This editorial from Saturday’s Mercury seems to believe it will:

Coffee Shops May Offer Economic Indicator

Editorial, Guelph Mercury, Saturday Feb. 9th www.guelphmercury.com

It may just be that people who live, work or frequently pass through downtown Guelph really like their coffee — or really need it.

These are simple explanations for a mini-boom in the independent coffee shop market taking place in the core.

But others suggest this development speaks to something very encouraging emerging or that has already arrived in this district.

Coffee-shop entrepreneur Dino Busato is one. He’s behind the latest coffee shop venture aiming to operate in the downtown — Sapphire, set to open May 1.

Busato figures the cluster of downtown-area condo developments expected over the next five to 10 years will transform the shopping landscape in the neighbourhood and make boutique operations such as his pending shop well-supported businesses.

University of Guelph Prof. Stuart McCook, a downtown resident and someone who has studied such things as the social history of foods — such as coffee — suggests the volume of independent coffee shops in the core already speaks to how the core has become a successful boutique shopping hub.

He suggests, in fact, that the coffee shops may be driving this trend and helping to make downtown “a destination.”

These are intriguing theses, each of which has elements that likely warm supporters of business in the downtown.

It’s clear, the success of these types of businesses — which cater more to an upmarket clientele or those who patronize these coffee shops as though they are in that economic class — stand as evidence of an attractive customer base in the area. The pending arrival of many more residents in the downtown with the means to live in pricey condos should only make this market a more attractive one for certain businesses to invest in.

Perhaps Busato and McCook are both correct.

But the streams of locals snaking through McDonald’s and Tim Hortons drive-throughs to get coffee just on the edge of the core also speaks to how Guelph-area people simply have to have their java. Perhaps this is more a case of a town with a giant need to get its coffee fixes, a disposition to buy it rather than brew it, and a downtown coffee shop market still finding its saturation point.

Time will most certainly tell.