About Us
Every barista passionate about their craft wants to own their own coffee company.
I was no exception.
In 2001, I had just bought into a café in Lindfield, on Sydney’s North Shore. I stood in front of its espresso machine, with the phone to my ear. My mate, Australian barista champion Luke MacSweeney, was at the other end of the line, teaching me how to extract coffee and steam milk. That was when I caught it – the passion to create the perfect espresso – liquid gold in a cup.
Even back then, mini air blower roasters were starting to pop up in the best cafes. We selected our blend and away we went. I tore through a lot of milk in those early days.
Early 2006 and we had moved to the Blue Mountains, we bought the local cafe, set it up as a Middle Eastern speciality cafe, and called it “Two Front Doors” (2FD to its regulars) - we continued along the path of the pocket roaster and carved out a name for ourselves as "THE" place for coffee and interesting food in the Mid Mountains, our regular clientele consisted of locals and bean hounds and hospitality staff on their days off from their own workplaces.
We tweaked our profiles and our blends feverishly in the cafe by the highway in Lawson for nearly 4 years. Late in 2009 the cafe sold to the RMS so they could make the road wider, we invested that money in a bigger roaster and continued to grow the business getting our coffee into a few key outlets and working with our operators to provide better coffee through training and support.
In 2012 we opened a caffe in Leura, Caffe Off Piste, hired the best baristas we could find and got ourselves an accolade, #49 in the Beanhunter "Best Cafes, World Class, 2013"
The beans are now roasted on a 110-kilo Joper roaster, in a state of the art facility. The beans themselves are drawn from the premier growing regions, where possible our beans are certified as, "Fair" "Direct" "RFA" "No Child Labour" "UTZ", we do not buy beans as a price point, and our practices are sound.
We purchase our beans from the following Countries:
Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Indonesia, PNG, Honduras, Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Columbia and Brazil
We use consumables with a lower footprint, our logo take away cups are 100% biodegradable, we encourage all our cafe operators to use post-consumer up-cycled packaging and paper goods.
The roaster is bigger these days, but not as big as the heart we put into creating the perfect blend for you.
We hope you enjoy our coffees and trust that you will find them as we intended them to be enjoyed –
FRESH AND PERFECT!!
KRAKALAK
dave