Blenz Coffee

Fast friendly service, and a great spot in heart of downtown VAncouver to rest up at work breaks — will miss this place! Are they currently renovating? I see the whole place gone… hope it comes back!

Extra star for faster service here; as well as the raised platform, wide layout & good action here. Guess serving the Canaccord brokers in this building sure helps ;) Mostly business ppl so no riff raff here.
Absolutely no direct street parking unless it’s a block away.
But convenient location for those who work & shop at the mall.

It’s a Blenz. I don’t like their coffee, or food, or many of their drinks. When I come I either get a strawberry tea latte with almond milk or jasmine green.
It’s hot. It’s small. It’s claustrophobic, especially on the second level (can you even call it that?) It’s always filled with people and they will hear you converse, or it’s filled with people trying to work and/​or study. I tried this once, but it didn’t last long because the music is SO loud and annoying… one random song comes on that I may like but otherwise it’s old techno or pop… not very serene…
Sitting on the first level is okay, but then again it’s not very private…
The bathrooms are disgustingly filthy as well.
They do have seating outside but the sun doesn’t shine much that way.
Kudos that all Blenz have almond milk. :D
I will say that the people working here are super friendly and the manager helped me when the wifi was acting iffy. :)

Totally love the Royal Tea Latte! Rose petals and black tea, with milk & vanilla. Yum! Service is friendly & efficient, it’s consistently clean and well-​stocked for milk/​sugar/​etc, and it’s a convenient location with entry from the street and from inside the building.

Not a coffee or tea drinker, so I can’t comment on those aspects. But there is one item on Blenz’s menu that is vastly superior to all other chain coffee shops — hot chocolate. This is the real deal here, not the overly sweetened powdery pretend-o’-chocolate from *$‘s (get it get it?) or Timmie’s. Milk chocolate, half sweet, extra hot — unpretentious chocoholic heaven for the everyday (wo)man on a winter day!
I also had a Chicken Samosa here today — skin was microwaved to a dry rubbery consistency, but the fillings were not bad at all — completely edible! A coworker also swears that a Lemon Blueberry Muffin he had the other day was fresh fluffy goodness.
Plenty of seating here. Though a little cramped and gets a little dark inside from lack of natural lighting.

Bleh, pretty quick and friendly service, and my ice coffee was okay, but I had BY FAR the worst breakfast sandwich I’ve ever had in my life here.

Blenz prides itself on being Canadian owned. Using the Blenz business model let’s take a look at what Canadian coffee culture is obviously all about:
Try a hunk of refrigerated banana bread with stale mini chocolate chips. These hearty loaves generally weigh in at several kilograms per loaf. They are traditionally served in Saran wrap.
Funfact: This banana bread officially became Canada’s national food in 1967 thanks to an amendment to our Constipation.
Traditionally Canadian cafes serve baked goods that have the consistency of a synthetic sponge. Many are adorned with half an inch of chocolatesque icing that sticks to the roof of your mouth like a polymer. Butter is served in small plastic tubs.
Funfact: Certain tribes in Canada believe that breaking a plastic knife in a tub of rock hard frozen butter is good luck.
Canadian coffee shops are decorated with heavy gray metal seats with beige cushions alongside sturdy beige tables. Beige walls and brown tile flooring complete the institutionally homogenized aesthetic of a typical Canadian café.
Funfact: The original design of the Canadian flag was beige and white.
But don’t forget this is a coffee shop. Order up a stale cup of coffee from beans that were picked and burnt long long ago. These inferior beans and burnt flavours are then vacuum sealed and can last for quite some time. Freshly roasted coffee beans are frowned upon and seen as too sophisticated and complex. Often locals can be heard saying; «The coffee at that small independently owned coffee shop down the street is too fresh! We fought in WWII to preserve our right to drink stale coffee.»
Funfact: Canadian soldiers valor in WWII was credited to the fact that the majority of them drank tea.
Canada is also renowned for it’s latte art. While other designs are starting to emerge the floral motif remains popular among traditionalists. It was originally introduced to distract the consumer from the fact that the product they’re consuming is actually quite vile.
Funfact: Emily Carr was the first Canadian to paint with her latte foam. Carr discovered this art form when she made a foam moustache and did an impression of Frida Kahlo for Tom Thomson. Her early latte art is considered her best work by most critics.
When you think of Canadian coffee think of Blenz.*
*Please don’t. We’re actually better than this.

Designed for computers
This Blenz location is attached to Pacific Center Mall, and for me, the major selling point is the abundance of electrical outlets and free wireless for computers. Other than that, it’s really nothing special. It is a hangout for kids from the many local ESL schools so often very challenging to find a seat (unless you are willing to ask a group of people to remove their backpacks from seats they are not occupying). There is outdoor seating along Granville — you will likely be approached for change by panhandlers but if you don’t mind that the outdoor seating is not a bad option.

A coffee shop is great especially when there is a window seat. Always loved looking into the Blenz on Granville. Not too loud and not too busy. Better than star bucks IMHO. P. s. I brought my own Internet.

I love Starbucks, but when I’m in Vancouver, I refuse to drink it. Instead, I go for their direct competitor: BLENZ! (WHY do we NOT have a store in Toronto??? This bugs me, alot.)
On the streets of downtown Vancouver, you’ll see at practically every street corner a Starbucks location and chances are, you’ll see a Blenz location near by. Everytime I’m in VanCity, I ALWAYS go for coffee at Blenz. In my humble opinion, their drip coffee is less acidic than Starbucks, and they have better blended drinks –they’re less sugary and less prepackaged, most drinks are made from scratch. (Have you seen the package of frozen goo Starbucks uses to make your Fraps?)
Being a tea drinker first and a coffee drinker second, Blenz is amazing because they sell loose-​leaf teas by the weight (to take-​home) and to enjoy by the cup. Unlike Starbucks and every other mainstream coffee shop, when you order tea, they don’t give you a regular tea bag, they fill a cup-​sized disposable tea filter with loose leaf tea and then infuse it in boiling hot water for you. This means you’re not drinking and paying for poor quality tea from a flimsy tea bag (made via the crush-​tear-​curl, CTC, method), you’re getting REAL tea leaves… meaning you’ll actually taste your tea and can infuse it for a second round. Regular tea bags loses taste fast after the first infusion because of the CTC method. (I used to work in a tea shop, so I KNOW teas and know to never pay for tea from a tea bag. No Red Rose for me! It’s like drinking dust mixed into water! Yuck! Also, I don’t like how a staple attaches the sack to the string, –why would I want to infuse that in my drink?!)
3 of my favourite things to drink at Blenz:
1. SOY Caffe Latte –I like their latte better than Starbucks. One barista did «foam art» for my drink, if I remember correctly, it was a heart!
2. SOY Matcha Latte –Unlike Starbucks, Blenz does not have a pre-​made Matcha-​mix for their latte. Starbucks’ Matcha-​mix contains sugar –yes I asked! But when you order the same at Blenz, they whip out a can of Japanese Matcha for it. It’s pure Matcha, not mixed with sugar or any other crap. Matcha does NOT need sugar to make it taste good.
3. SOY Chai Latte aka «London Fog» –Like Starbucks, they use a pre-​mixed syrup for this drink. But I’d worked at a tea shop before, so I want real Chai in my Chai Latte, NOT the pre-​mixed, sugary crap. At both locations, they’re more than happy to replace the Chai goo with a Chai tea bag. Since Starbucks does not have loose leaf tea, they use a conventional (pre-​packaged) tea bag with Chai tea and steep that in hot soymilk. Blenz, however, fill a tea bag filter with real Chai tea and infuses that in soymilk. It’s awesome, but wait about 3 – 5 minutes, you need to give it time for the Chai to steep and the flavours to come out.
Blenz… one of the reasons why I love beautiful British Columbia! And why I travel to Vancouver every year.
PS. You can find a Blenz in Canada (BC), Japan, China and the UAE… The UAE??? So why can’t Toronto have at least ONE?

This used to be my favourite Blenz because they had Cornish Pasties. I went for the first time in a long time, and they didn’t have them anymore. They did have cupcakes instead. The cupcake was properly fluffy, and the icing was creamier than sugary! Wonderful.
The tea I got was loose leafed, which they put into a teabag-​like pouch. The sencha was light and refreshing as I expected.
My favourites at Blenz are:
+ Strawberry Tea Latte
+ Hot Chocolate or Cold Chocolate made with real chocolate chips (Milk)
+ Royal Tea Latte
+ Matcha Latte
Free Wi-​Fi — though it wasn’t that strong, so I kept using the 3G on my iPhone. Still a good place to study, though. Lots of one-​person-​facing-​the-​wall tables along with chatting-​with-​friends seats.
It would have received more stars if the washroom was better… it wasn’t thoroughly disgusting, but pretty messy.