ABOUT
coffee drs
Maximising Our Good, One Coffee at a Time
How it Began
On the 4th of July 2016, Luke Bantatua gave up his lucrative pharmaceuticals career to begin roasting coffee. His family, themselves all in the medical industry, were bemused. But Luke knew what he wanted.
He was hired on as a junior coffee roaster in Alexandria, Sydney. And within a few months, he was thrown into the deep end when he was made the head coffee roaster. Luke knew that this was his chance to either epically fail, or grow to create something he could be really proud of. He dug in, spending long nights and early mornings learning and reading as much as he could about roasting coffee.
It paid off.
In February 2017, Luke created a blend called ‘BANTAT’, a riff of his surname. It received the highest score at Sydney Fine Foods.
From Kitchen Table to Cafe Owner
Now Luke wanted to do more. He rented a small 1kg roaster and, with the expert guidance of friend and mentor James Craig, a previous two-time roasting champion himself, started roasting small batches of coffee beans at his dining room table.
When he got a product he was proud of, he simply started door knocking in his local neighbourhood, selling his roasted beans to whoever would give him a chance.
There were days when every house turned him down, but Luke had a full belief in his product. And a determination to improve the experiences of coffee lovers kept him going.
Thanks to a few regular coffee loving neighbours reordering Luke’s coffee, business started to pick up and word started to spread around the Hornsby area. Luke found himself needing to move his coffee bean operation out of his home dining area into a large coffee shop where he could store, package, showcase and serve his coffee beans.
Meet Cute
Amongst all this Luke met Julia Pains. A single, workaholic with a vision of the future of coffee, he wasn’t interested in getting to know anyone. But Julia was different. She was Brazilian, studying business and social entrepreneurship and she’d grown up in a family of coffee producers. Sometimes things are too aligned to ignore.
For Julia, healing the coffee industry is personal. She knows firsthand what happens when small farmers aren’t paid a fair price for their beans. They simply move onto something else. Her past and purpose aligned perfectly with Luke’s. It was the missing piece for Coffee DRs and focused its mission and values.
Our Mission
Coffee DRs is named to reflect our mission to make coffee sustainable for the future by healing the coffee industry one coffee at a time.
Join Us – It’s Not Something We Can Do Alone
We are fully committed to achieving our mission, but we can’t do it alone. Everyone can play their part with every single cup of coffee that they buy.
When you support coffee shops that are transparent and demonstrate high traceability with their beans, you’re helping to heal the coffee industry. When you pay a fair price for a cup of coffee, you’re helping to heal the coffee industry. And when you commit to drinking coffee sourced from small family-owned farms throughout the world, you’re helping to heal the coffee industry.
After all, while we’re not sure how much small farmers get from $1 coffees, we’re sure it’s not much.
What Makes Us Different
Healing coffee means sustainable coffee. It means coffee that’s good for you (the drinker), us (the roasters) and, of course, the small farms that are producing the beans (the farmers).
Coffee + Community
At Coffee DRs we’re not just focused on the coffee industry community, but on our local community as well. Once Coffee DRs was up and running, word spread quickly around Hornsby. We continue to bring in customers, repeat and new, every day because of our focus on community. Not just the coffee-producing community, but the coffee-loving community as well.
When someone sees you walking around with a distinctive Coffee DRs blue cup it tells them something about you. It tells them that you have a passion for good coffee. That you drink it because you love the varying tastes of the beans and the intense flavour notes that come from expert roasting. In fact, it tells them that you’re more than just a coffee lover. That you’re a coffee purist. A coffee evangelist.
You are our people. And when you come into our shop we demonstrate that to you by making you feel valued and important. We’ll remember you, we’ll greet you and, hopefully, over time, we’ll become friends. That’s how we want our community to be and that’s how we want you to feel.
One Coffee At a Time
Luke’s dream is to one day roast larger volumes of coffee and extend support to sustainable coffee farms throughout the world, while still giving coffee lovers an intense and exciting coffee experience to look forward to everyday.
But in the meantime, he’ll keep making change, one coffee at a time.