You might want to grab a cup of coffee, this is a long one. Our coffee journey has been led by faith and we’ve been helped along the way by many fantastic friends and family to get us where we are today. West Coast Coffee Co was started in the good old town of Pietermaritzburg, but we feel a calling to move to Langebaan on the West Coast, hence our name. We are not sure where our journey is going to take us, but it has been great thinking back on how we got to where we are now.
We started out thinking we were the bee’s knees with our Nescafe Gold. We eventually moved on to Douwe Egberts and when we felt like a treat, we’d grab a sachet of instant cappuccino. Special occasions called for flavoured coffee from our old filter machine. We truly have come a long way.
A dear friend by the name of Paul De Villiers brought his Lavazza pod machine along with us on holiday to Hole in the Wall in Coffee Bay. We overdosed ourselves on every flavour we could get our hands on and returned home as changed people. It was time to get real. We purchased a Breville coffee machine and a herb smasher to grind our beans. And we lived happily ever after. For a few years we were proud coffee gurus and even landed up with our very own Lavazza pod machine. The machine was eventually taken to our office and known as VIP coffee. Our daughter Ava, whom is now 5, from the time she could talk would answer the question of “What time is it?” with “It’s coffee time!”
Since then, our coffee collection has expanded. We have restored a number of machines that have provided many good cups of coffee to friends and family on our faith journey. We even tried our hand at growing a few coffee trees and with much joy and delight, have been able to harvest a whole 9 beans from them.
After 8 years of running a successful total industrial solutions company we decided to take a leap of faith and sell that business and start up West Coast Coffee Co. A day after we signed the sale agreement on our previous business, we received a phone call from Craig Charity who offered us first dibs on his Diedrich coffee roaster. We spent a week at Lineage Coffee in Hillcrest with Craig, Kgune and Fani who motivated and inspired us to get ‘cracking’.
With a coffee roaster from Disney Land and aptly named Mickey, we will end with a quote from Walt Disney: “What ever you do, do it well. Do it so well that when people see you do it, they will want to come back and see you do it again, and they will want to bring others and show them how well you do what you do.”
For delicious hand roasted coffee beans and an authentic coffee experience, please be sure to visit our shop.