Can't believe how long it's been since I wrote a post! Hope everyone's well and have survived lockdowns 1, 2 & 3, let's hope there's not a 4th!
We've been very busy in the past year or so. We converted our van to serve coffee and other hot drinks and traded at a few Food Festivals including Abergavenny, Margam Park and Mid Wales Autumn Fayre. It was great to get out and meet you all once again.
Trade began picking up again and we decided we needed to get a bigger roaster as John was roasting most evenings after getting home from his full-time job. The problem with this was, we couldn't get a bigger roaster in our converted garage/roastery.
As we saw it we had two options, a shop or a unit. We thought the unit would be a bit soulless and we'd rather have day to day contact with our customers so the hunt began for a shop premises. Our problem was that we needed something big enough not only to hold the roaster, but to also have enough room around it for a shop and access for deliveries, and we needed to be able to get the roaster in through the doors!
We started in Treorchy, looked in Carmarthen, Aberystwyth, the outskirts of Cardiff and finally settled on Brecon. The shop is ideal with plenty of room front of house and room for packing and storage out the back and it has a basement. The area is 'up and coming' with many shops being filled following lockdown and there's plenty of footfall, especially with the added tourists in the summer.
It took about 5months to sort the lease out and for John and I to fit out the shop with our vision of 'recycled industrial' on a shoestring budget. We finally opened TWO DOGS COFFEE & TEA EMPORIUM at 104 Th Struet, Brecon LD3 7LT, at the end of November 2021 despite not being able to get the roaster connected until the middle of January 2022.
Our idea was for around 30 different coffee beans sold loose and pre-packed, coffee machines, brewers and accessories and we decided to take on loose leaf teas and their accessories too. But the main star of the show was to be the roaster, allowing customers to see the coffee being roasted by John on a Friday and a Saturday. We intend to have tasting evenings in the near future and to be able to train new roasters and baristas. We have a coffee machine on the premises to serve takeaway drinks (we don't have an A3 licence for a cafe) and in order to allow customers to taste the coffee before they buy, we have 4 beans on the grinders which we rotate every few weeks.
I've updated the website with more coffee beans and the new addition of teas from UK Loose Leaf Teas who are also based in Brecon, so you can still order online.
So, all in all, things are looking bright for Two Dogs Coffee Roasting Company and we look forward to seeing and serving you in the future x