Kelowna’s Canoe Coffee Roaster gliding into new identity this summer

Kelowna's Canoe Coffee Roasters has been given a six month grace period to phase out their branding by the "multi-billion-dollar" US company that threatened crippling legal action.

"Our lawyers are heroes," Jen Upshaw said in an email last week.

"We’ve got two names that have passed a pretty rigorous trademark search and we’ll be choosing one in the next couple days."

They also have a designer lined up to help them tackle the rebrand and, she said, they’re "feeling excited."

The new identity won't be revealed until the summer.

The popular Kelowna coffee roaster was forced to change its name after a "multi-billion-dollar" US company threatened crippling legal action over its similarly branded offshoot.

Canoe Coffee Roasters started providing specialty coffee in 2015 out of a trailer that became a Kelowna hotspot. It grew into a roastery and cafe in the North End earlier this year, and have been “grounding coffee lovers” with their specialty blends ever since.

Upshaw was originally concerned the branding losses would be significant.

Canoe, she said, felt like a good fit because it matched their initial vision of something calming, sustainable, active and steeped in Canadian heritage.

“We’re sad to lose that but changing the name won’t change who we are,” she said. “We have to rebrand, get fresh and create again.”

To do that they reached out to their community which, in itself, is part of the core values of the company.