Co-founders of Toasti Bean, Hayley Johnston and Thao Lam, at a Third + Bird Market
Infused and in business
Toasti Bean co-founders Thao Lam and Hayley Johnston share the story of their unique coffee creations
At one of Manitoba’s many maker markets, Toasti Bean co-founders Hayley Johnston [BComm(Hons)/13] and Thao Lam [BComm(Hons)/16] offer samples of pistachio ice cream, blueberry pancakes, and caramel stickybun, excited to share that—yes—many of these tasty treats are also available in decaf.
Toasti Bean has become a staple on the market circuit, selling bags of infused coffee: carefully sourced beans that are locally roasted, then ground and infused with spices and extracts that capture the flavours and feelings of everything from the aforementioned desserts to lavender dreams and pumpkin spice.
Lam shares that one of the best parts of running Toasti Bean with business partner (and best friend) Johnston are these moments of love at first taste. “It’s cool seeing how pleasantly surprised people are when they try it,” she says. “We hear, ‘I don’t usually like coffee, but I really like this,’ or people immediately think of a loved one who might like it too.
“That’s what’s so special about our coffee: it allows people to share an experience.”
Lam and Johnston know a thing or two about shared experiences, meeting while they pursued their Bachelor of Commerce degrees at the Asper School of Business, sharing the same first job at Paquin Entertainment after graduation (two years apart), and starting an entrepreneurial journey together as business partners and co-founders at Toasti Bean.
In 2020, Johnston, who always had a love of baking, started to experiment with different recipes of coffee, extracts, and spices. These bags of small-batch flavoured coffee were, at first, a fun and unique gift for friends and family. Drawing on their backgrounds in leadership, marketing, and accounting, Johnston and Lam set up a website to meet the demand that was quickly growing beyond their own circles.
“It was a hit,” says Johnston.
Four years later, Lam and Johnston have upgraded to their own food handling facility, scaling up those original flavour experiments and producing larger batches to sell at markets and retailers in Manitoba.
In an interview with The Winnipeg Free Press, Johnston explains how Toasti Bean does flavoured coffee differently. Flavoured coffee, she says, gets a bad rap when the flavour is covering up bad coffee. With Toasti Bean, Lam and Johnston believe that the foundation of their product—coffee beans—should be superior in quality and more.
“We source our coffee beans from women producers, mostly in South and Central America,” Lam explains. “It’s about women empowerment,” adds Johnston,
“It’s gratifying to sell our product knowing that we are running a women-led initiative and supporting women coffee producers.”
The flavours at Toasti Bean complement, rather than cover, an exceptional foundation of carefully sourced coffee. As best-friends-turned-business-partners, Lam and Johnston are each willing to acknowledge that life does imitate coffee.
“Thao definitely grounds me because I am very type A and tend to run about a hundred miles an hour,” says Johnston. “She is more patient and helps balance that energy out.”
Lam, in response, commends Johnston’s drive. “Hayley’s type-A-ness is great because as a creative, I can be more head in the clouds. She is super organized and methodical and has an amazing attention to detail. She makes sure that we are always forging ahead,” she says.
Speaking of strong foundations, Lam and Johnston emphasize how their studies at Asper have informed their success today.
“I feel like I owe everything in my career to my BComm education because it provides that foundation for success,” says Lam while Johnston recalls the power of connecting to other aspiring entrepreneurs and the joy of seeing fellow Asper ventures at markets.
They each note that entrepreneurship and running a business introduce surprises that even the best business textbook couldn’t write, but that their business education gave them the tools they needed to respond, to adapt, to succeed in full-time roles, all while recognizing and taking seriously their shared entrepreneurial spark.
In speaking with The Winnipeg Free Press, Lam and Johnston explain that finding the right flavour formula isn’t a matter of devising a one-to-one match. Instead, they work to create recipes that go beyond the thing itself—a bag of Toasti Bean caramel stickybun coffee will have notes brown sugar and icing, but it will also evoke memories of fresh baking in the morning, trying a new local bakery, or returning to an old favourite.
A successful recipe, perhaps like a certain business partnership, is transformative; it’s all in how it comes together.
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Coffee connoisseurs can find Toasti Bean online or sample coffee at The Scattered Seeds Market (October 25-27), Inspirations Market (November 9-10), Third + Bird (November 22-24), and Third + Bird Winter Pop Up (December 13-14) in the coming months.
A Bachelor of Commerce (Honours) from the Asper School of Business is your ticket to a successful, meaningful future. Whether you want to work with people or numbers, turn ideas into thrilling business ventures, or make a difference in the world around you, an Asper BComm gives you the business knowledge, leadership skills, and networking opportunities you need to achieve your dreams. Learn more.
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