Story of the Authentic Check Up Blend, Sustainable Coffee:

How It Began

On the 4th of July 2016, Luke Bantatua made a career change from pharmaceuticals to coffee roasting, pursuing a passion for building community through coffee. So, he became a junior coffee roaster in Alexandria, Sydney.

In a few months, he was thrown into the deep end by becoming the head coffee roaster. This presented a great challenge. Luke began learning and reading as much as he could about roasting coffee just to keep up with his job, which meant many long nights and early mornings.

Luke started roasting small batches of coffee beans by renting a small 1kg roaster. He began using it under the expert guidance of his friend and mentor James Craig, a previous two time roasting champion. Over time he started developing his own unique blend, one that he personally enjoyed brewing with an Aeropress at home. By February 2017, Luke had developed a blend - “BANTAT” (aptly named after his surname), which received the highest score at Sydney Fine Foods that year.

From Kitchen Table to Café

Soon, he started door knocking in his local neighbourhood, selling roasted beans door to door. There were some discouraging days when every house turned him down. But rejection was a natural part of the process, and only consolidated his full belief in his product and a determination to improve the experiences of many coffee lovers.

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. He found himself needing to move his coffee bean operation out of his home dining area and into a substantial coffee shop where he could store, package, showcase and serve his sustainable coffee beans properly.

With the guidance of his friend and mentor Dane Ross, he was able to add a coffee bar at the front of his parents’ medical practice where the locals of Hornsby could experience the coffee and enjoy it as much as he did. Coffee DRs is named to reflect Luke’s mission to make coffee sustainable for the future – healing coffee like doctors heal people.

Building a Community Blend

Both Luke’s venture into local sales and interacting with people in store provided a great opportunity to hear back from the community. The feedback involved ideas like the blend needing more sweetness, character and body to enhance its ability to be made and enjoyed according to anyone's preference.

However, as Luke continued to make adjustments to the roast profile, it still lacked the level of balance and smoothness that he wanted. This naturally lead to the next step to reaching a truly unique coffee; experimenting with different types of beans, rather than solely the roast profile.

Blending coffee from five different premium single origins at the right roasting profile gave a completely new end result. Sourcing these sustainable coffees also gave Coffee DRs the potential to contribute to the future generations of coffee farmers in the five countries of origin: Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Kenya and Ethiopia. By sourcing these beans directly, Coffee DRs could send resources to those immediately involved in the labour of farming, rather than anyone looking to unfairly profit from the industry.

The End Result

This final blend was called the Authentic Check Up blend. It’s both a culmination and representation of the hard work of Luke’s door knocking days and a passion for healing, sustainable coffee. It’s a nice smooth coffee, perfect for everyday that also feels great to drink. When you purchase this coffee, you support the small farmers from Kenya, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Colombia and Brazil. We know you’ll love that.