Dartmouth-based Two If By Sea cafe has won a major grant for innovation that was partly decided by public voting.

The Business Development Bank of Canada announced Monday morning the darlings of HRM’s coffee connoisseurs had been chosen from eight submissions as the winner of the $100,000 Grand Prize for Innovation.

Two If By Sea submitted a proposal to launch a new roastery that will use only coffee bought directly from farmers in Central and South America.

The “Anchored Coffee” project includes a front-of-house coffee lab for customer tasting and education.

Cafe co-founder Zane Kelsall tells News 95.7 the funding means the start-up costs of the roastery will be covered so he can get the business up to speed that much faster.

“We’re going to focus on very small lots of coffee that we buy directly from farmers,” he said. “I will be travelling to coffee-producing countries to meet farmers, visit their farms and buy unblended, single-origin coffee from them, and hopefully develop long-term, lasting relationships that go on for years.”

Kelsall says news of the win was a huge relief after three weeks of voting that saw TIBS swing from first to second and back again through the final days.

“Over the last two days, they took the rankings away from us and we had no idea where we were and whether we were going to be able to pull it off,” he said. “But we have an awesome support and awesome community and people really just brought it home for us.”  

The “Anchored Coffee” project beat out seven other proposals from Canadian entrepreneurs.