Olivia Billeci starts each morning with a cup of coffee. Unlike most Mac students, though, who may be picking up their morning joe from a favourite cafe, Billeci’s coffee is from her own roasting collective – Thirds Coffee. 

The DeGroote School of Business MBA student is starting the business with her sister, Alex. They have an online site and a retail space at 119 John Street North, where their focus is building community, one cup at a time.  

Opening a community-focused business was a natural step for Billeci, who was born and raised in Hamilton.  

She had a varied path to entrepreneurship: She did an undergraduate degree in math before moving to New York City to study theatre.  

Wherever her adventures took her, “I always came right back to Hamilton,” Billeci said.  

She moved back full-time in 2015 and got a job at Collective Arts, which had opened two years earlier with an innovative idea to combine craft beverages with work from emerging artists around the world.  

Being part of a startup enabled her to try multiple roles within the company — giving out samples, sales and marketing, artist relations, applying her math skills in pricing and costing — before finally becoming their director of strategic insights.  

“Being in that startup culture, you needed to be an entrepreneur and kind of do all the things,” Billeci said. “It gave me that drive to figure it out.”  

She worked at a couple more startups after that, before deciding it was time to launch something of her own: Thirds Coffee.  

Rise and grind

The name comes from the idea of third spaces – a community hub outside of work and home, and a reminder for people to be connected.  

It came about because Billeci and her sister had seen the rising price of green coffee beans, and they started wondering how that was going to be sustainable for smaller businesses. “You’re going to be paying $8 for a latte,” Billeci said. So they came up with the idea of a place where coffee wasn’t just consumed, but created.  

As a coffee roasting collective, they plan to offer roasting classes and workshops, community events, and rental use of their 10-kilogram coffee roaster. They had a soft launch in August and started running their first roasting classes in October. 

“It’s a space for cafes, new businesses, restaurants, home roasters, and the curious beginners to take ownership of their own bean program,” Billeci said.  

The model puts the control of where the beans are coming from into the hands of the people brewing it – allowing them to make more sustainable choices.  

It’s also a cost-effective choice for small businesses, as they’d save 30 per cent of what they’d pay for roasted beans, Billeci said.  

She dreams of Thirds being a space where the local community is becoming not only more resilient but more connected. “People can come in, have a cup of coffee. We have cold brew on tap,” Billeci said.  

In the back, the roaster sits in an open-concept space where customers feel like they’re part of the roastery, allowing people to learn alongside each other.  

“Hamilton already has such a great coffee culture,” Billeci said. “I really think that this is going to elevate it.”  

Billeci has been picking up new skills of her own along the way.“It’s another learning experience,” she said. There’s no manual for starting your own business. “You just talk to everybody that you can.”  

And the community has been supportive so far. “But I mean, that’s what we expect from Hamilton.”  

The perfect blend

At the same time as she’s been opening her business, Billeci has started another new venture – getting her MBA from the DeGroote School of Business.   

From her math degree to hands-on work with startups, “I’ve got the experience,” Billeci said. “It’s time now to sharpen those tools so that I can help grow Thirds responsibly, whether it comes to strategy, financials, [or] leadership.”  

McMaster was the obvious choice for her, with its own emphasis on both community impact and entrepreneurship.   

She connected with CoMotion co-founder Ryan Moran and Merit Brewing founder Tej Sandhu – both DeGroote MBA grads – who were extremely encouraging and supportive, even before she started the program.  

“It just made sense that this is the right place to grow, both myself and Thirds,” she said.  

It’s hard to imagine more active learning than starting her business and MBA at the same time. “I’m living at the intersection of theory and practice,” she said. “How lucky is that?”  

With three years of the program ahead of her, she’s excited to gain not just a degree, but the confidence to level up her work and have a meaningful impact on Hamilton businesses.  

In September, on the first day of her MBA leadership class, Billeci was busy meeting 68 new people. As they broke into smaller groups and did introductions, Billeci shared that she had started a roasting collective in Hamilton.  

“A guy in my group said, ‘Oh my gosh, do you own Thirds?’” Billeci said. “And I thought, what? I’ve made it.  

“This is it. Thirds is on the map.”