Frank O'Dea Got Sober Off the Streets of Toronto, Then Co-Founded Second Cup

Frank O'Dea grew up in Montreal. He has said he became an alcoholic at 13. By his early twenties, drinking had taken over his life, and he was living on the streets of Toronto.

O'Dea spent years panhandling in Toronto, asking strangers for coins and sleeping, when he could afford it, in flophouses that cost about 50 cents a night. He has described that life as dirty and lonely, and has said he kept putting off the decision to stop drinking.

It is worth being clear about what this story is and is not. O'Dea did not lose a business empire and then win it back. He lost years of his youth to addiction, and his recovery came first. Everything else was built on it.

O'Dea has told the story many times. A stranger at a Toronto intersection dropped a dime into his cup, and he used it to call an alcohol support line. He has said he never drank again after that call. Accounts place his recovery around 1970, in his early twenties.

He has been careful to credit people rather than willpower alone. In a 2018 University of Calgary interview, he said he built his whole life on that dime and that the man who gave it had no idea what he did. He has also said he keeps up his recovery through self-help groups and meditation.

Getting sober did not hand him a career. O'Dea has said a turning point came when someone looked past his history and told him they thought he would be a good salesman. He took the opportunity and began to build a working life.

By 1974, according to Royal Roads University, he had run a successful political campaign and started a small business out of his home.

O'Dea partnered with Tom Culligan. According to The Walrus, their first venture together was selling coin sorters to Catholic churches. Then they turned to coffee. In August 1975 they opened the first Second Cup, a kiosk in a Toronto shopping mall that sold only whole coffee beans. It was a modest start. Carleton University, in honoring him, noted that O'Dea envisioned selling coffee by the cup, and the business grew from there.

The partnership was not always smooth, and within about a decade Culligan bought out O'Dea's shares. Culligan grew the chain to nearly 150 stores before selling it in 1988. Second Cup has since changed hands many times, and its parent company went through creditor protection in 2025, so its history is not a simple straight line.

O'Dea kept starting things. He co-founded Proshred Security, an on-site document destruction business, and co-founded Street Kids International in 1985 to help homeless children abroad. He was founding chair of War Child Canada and helped found the Canadian Landmine Foundation.

In 2003 he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada, cited for his victory over substance abuse and his willingness to share his story with others battling addiction. He has written about his life in the memoir When All You Have Is Hope.