Squamish is a relatively small but fast-changing town in British Columbia, Canada.
Squamish feels busier than it did when I first settled here in 2018 and 2019.
I notice it in ordinary places.
Downtown parking can be difficult during the day. Traffic backs up more often. Grocery shopping feels busier. Housing has become a constant conversation, especially rent and how difficult it can be to find a place.
On weekends, visitors add another layer.
None of this is a population study. It is simply what living here feels like to me after several years.
The official numbers do show real growth. In the 2021 Census, the District of Squamish had 23,819 residents, up 22.2% from 2016. There were 9,191 private dwellings occupied by usual residents. Statistics Canada counted both population and occupied dwellings growing much faster than the provincial average over that five-year period.
It would be easy to look at those numbers and reach a simple conclusion:
More people must mean room for another coffee business.
I do not think it works that way.
Squamish is growing, but it is still a small place
One of the interesting things about Squamish is that both things can be true at once.
It is growing quickly.
And it still feels very small.
Geography has something to do with that.
Highway 99 runs through a long, narrow community with mountains on one side and waterways and constrained land on the other. Different neighbourhoods stretch along the highway, but the distances are still short. Depending on where you start, you can cross much of town in roughly fifteen minutes.
There are only so many places for the town to expand.
New apartments and housing continue to be built, but adding homes here is not the same as expanding across an open plain.
The pressure is visible in official planning too. Squamish’s 2024 Interim Housing Needs Report identified a need for 1,586 additional housing units over five years and 6,300 over twenty years under the provincial methodology. A separate provincial Housing Target Order requires at least 1,069 net new completed units between September 2025 and 2030.
Those numbers tell me that more households are expected and that housing demand remains significant.
They do not tell me how many of those households will buy Filgap Coffee.
That is a much smaller question.
And a harder one.
This is not an empty coffee town
There is something else I have to be realistic about.
People in Squamish already have plenty of places to buy coffee.
Tourism Squamish currently lists 21 participating stops in its Squamish Coffee Crawl alone. That list is not necessarily every business in town that serves coffee, but it is enough to make one thing clear:
I am not entering an empty market.
That matters.
When I first started thinking seriously about Filgap, I spent time looking for gaps. I still think that way. It is part of the reason behind the name.
But a gap does not mean nobody else is doing good work.
There are cafés here. There are bakeries serving coffee. There are businesses with their own particular combination of coffee, food, outdoor culture, gathering space or retail. The market keeps moving while I am planning.
That sometimes makes me uncomfortable.
Of course it does.
If a new coffee business appeared tomorrow doing exactly what I hope to do, very well, I would have to ask myself whether my original reason for starting Filgap still existed.
I cannot assume I am right simply because I have spent a long time thinking about it.
What I can do is be clear about the promise I think I can keep.
I believe I can work very carefully with specialty coffee, roast it consistently, keep the time between roasting and local customers relatively short, and stay focused on the coffee itself.
Then I have to find out whether enough people actually value that.
Competition can mean more than one thing
A town with many coffee shops can look frightening to someone considering another one.
Maybe there is too much supply.
That is possible.
But competition can also tell you that people already spend money in the category.
Squamish has enough coffee culture that Tourism Squamish operates an entire Coffee Crawl.
That does not prove another coffee company will work.
It proves something much narrower.
Coffee already has a place in the town.
The useful question is not:
Does Squamish have coffee shops?
Clearly it does.
The question for Filgap is:
Is there a specific combination that enough people still want more easily or more consistently than they can get it now?
For me, that combination begins with good coffee, freshness, consistency and local availability.
Convenience matters too.
Price matters.
The more I talk with people, the less I think a coffee business can afford to treat those as secondary concerns.
Coffee demand is not Filgap demand
There are reassuring numbers at the national level.
The Coffee Association of Canada reported in February 2026 that 71% of Canadian adults surveyed said they had consumed a coffee beverage the previous day. It also found that consumers facing higher prices were changing how they bought coffee rather than simply abandoning it: reducing some out-of-home spending, looking for value and trying products at home.
That interests me because Filgap is beginning with people who make coffee at home.
But national coffee consumption does not tell me whether Filgap will work in Squamish.
A Canadian coffee drinker is not automatically a whole-bean buyer.
A whole-bean buyer is not automatically looking for fresh local coffee.
Someone who likes fresh coffee may not like the flavour direction I roast.
Someone who likes the flavour may decide the price is too high.
And someone who likes all of it may still prefer the convenience of what they already buy.
Each step makes the potential market smaller.
That is not bad news.
It is the market becoming more real.
Households may matter more to me than population
The more I think about Filgap’s first stage, the more interested I am in households rather than just population.
The 2021 Census counted 9,191 occupied private dwellings in the District of Squamish.
I do not need all of them.
I do not need half of them.
I do not yet know how many I need.
What matters is whether there is a workable group of households where coffee is a repeating purchase.
Someone finishes a bag.
They need another one.
They may buy Filgap again, or they may try something else and come back later.
That recurring cycle is much more useful to me than simply knowing how many thousands of people live inside a municipal boundary.
I have played with rough numbers while thinking about the Farmers’ Market.
If Filgap eventually reached a point where it could sell something like 100 to 150 bags during a weekly market day, do that consistently, and see a meaningful portion of those purchases coming from returning customers, I would start to feel that the local market was giving me something real to work with.
That is not a forecast.
I have no sales history yet that could justify calling it one.
It is a planning scenario.
The market will tell me whether it is realistic.
Numbers can help me avoid bad ideas
I believe in market research.
I also know its limits.
I have spent enough time in business to know that a spreadsheet can make something look very convincing.
Population.
Income.
Growth rate.
Average spending.
Market share.
Put enough numbers together and eventually they produce a sales figure.
That exercise is still worth doing.
I will do it again for Filgap.
But businesses are rarely decided by one or two numbers.
A coffee shop is a good example.
Location can change almost everything.
A great location may bring visibility, accessibility and traffic.
It may also come with rent high enough to change the economics of the whole business.
The money going into rent cannot also go into green coffee, equipment, staff or something else that improves the product.
Move somewhere cheaper and another problem appears.
Will people go there?
That is why market size, location, cost and business model eventually have to be considered together.
I do not think a single spreadsheet can settle that argument.
The market changes while the business plan sits still
This is another lesson from returning to a business plan written a few years earlier.
The town did not wait.
New residents arrived.
Businesses opened and closed.
Coffee choices changed.
Costs changed.
Housing changed.
My own idea of Filgap changed too.
That means competitor research from several years ago cannot simply be copied into a new plan and treated as current.
A gap discovered in 2024 needs to be checked again before I rely on it in 2027.
And again later if necessary.
That might sound obvious.
It is surprisingly easy to become attached to the market you originally researched rather than the one that actually exists.
What I would check before committing to the market
If I were assessing another small-town coffee business, I would still start with the numbers. Then I would try to work my way closer and closer to actual behaviour.
- How many people and households are really in the trade area?
- Is the community growing, stable or shrinking?
- What coffee choices do people already have?
- What does my proposed business add rather than duplicate?
- How are the people I care about currently buying coffee?
- How important are price, convenience, quality and location to them?
- How small a share of the market would the business need in order to survive?
- Can I test that demand before committing to a lease and a large fixed cost?
- After someone tries the product once, do they come back?
The earlier questions can often be answered with research.
The last one cannot.
Someone eventually has to buy the coffee.
Then decide whether they want it again.
The spreadsheet can only take me so far
I think there is room for Filgap in Squamish.
I would not be spending this much time building it if I did not.
But I also know that belief is not evidence.
Squamish is growing. Coffee is already deeply familiar here. More housing is planned. Canadians continue to drink a great deal of coffee, including at home.
All of those things make the idea plausible.
They do not make it proven.
That is one of the reasons I like the Farmers’ Market as an early step.
It lets Filgap meet the town before asking the town to support a permanent space.
I can put coffee on the table.
People can taste it.
They can decide whether it is worth buying.
And later, when the first bag is gone, they can decide again.
The spreadsheet can tell me whether the idea deserves to be tested.
People coming back will tell me whether the market is real.
