Espresso Room / advertising feature
Packing a lot of quality into a coffee cup TWO passionate young business owners are leading the charge to satisfy Canberra’s coffee connoisseurs, with an appreciation of every little thing that goes into a great cup. For Ona Coffee founder Sasa Sestic and his good mate Michael Rose, who owns the Espresso Room at Woden Westfield and now in Tuggeranong Hyperdome, that includes elements like happy cafe staff, roasters and growers, along with top barista skills and some of the highest grade beans in the world. “Coffee is graded in points, like wine,” says Sasa, explaining that in Cup of Excellence (CoE), the world’s most prestigious coffee farming competition, beans that get more than 80 points out of 100 are certified specialty coffees while 85 is the minimum to be called a Cup of Excellence. For the rare bean that cracks 90, there’s the Presidential Award. “I just found out I’m the first Q-grader in the ACT that’s been certified, so that means my palate is certified and I can actually go all over the world and judge coffee and score coffee,” he says proudly, as he shows “CityNews” around the Fyshwick shop where Ona roasts, wholesales and serves its incredible coffee. “It’s really exciting; there’s only about a thousand people in the world that have this Q Grading certification from the Coffee Quality Institute, an international non-profit organisation that works to improve the quality of coffee and the lives of the people who produce it.” Q Graders must pass a rigorous three-day exam to earn their certification, comprising of 22 sections on coffee-related subjects, such as green grading, roast identification, coffee cupping, sensory skills and sensory triangulation. Sestic lives and breathes coffee, but he didn’t always; he migrated to Australia from Serbia in 1997 to play European handball and represented his new home at the Sydney Olympic Games three years later.
Espresso Room owner Michael Rose, left, with Ona Coffee founder Sasa Sestic… “We want to be involved with the producers as well and teach them how to improve their quality even more,” says Sasa. His passion for the art and science of coffee came through running Hansel and Gretel franchises – a better living than handball – and threw himself into training and education with the dedication of an elite athlete, winning loads of awards since then, including the 2011 Australasian Barista Championship. “We met years ago watching the World Cup at a joint friend’s house; Sasa was roasting in a garage back then,” explains Michael, who chose Ona Coffee when he later bought his first cafe business at Woden Westfield. The pair soon teamed up and won a spot in the Department of Health’s Woden headquarters against about 30 competing tenders, setting up the successful Urban Bean
cafe, which Michael still owns today. Having learnt some hard lessons through other business ventures and less successful partnerships, and seeing his friend’s knowledge of coffee grow and grow, Michael knew he wanted to focus on quality. “I love food and I consider myself a foodie, but by simplifying it and just doing one thing and doing it well, you can eliminate a lot of problems,” he says, adding that the strategy has also worked well financially by giving Espresso Room a point of difference, providing quality coffee within a shopping mall and more accessible to everyone. Michael explains he is taking care to build the skills within the company to always do
justice to Sasa’s fine grinds. “Each head barista has a percentage in my store and is involved in my company and that’s how I’m going to sustain the growth; I don’t want to grow until my baristas are ready to grow. When an assistant barista is ready to become a head barista, they have the opportunity to buy into their own store, and that’s how we’re going to control quality, and not just become another franchisor.” All of the Espresso Room Barista’s are put through a training program with the head and assistant baristas being invited to attend a “Masterclass Program”, a barista master class run by Sasa at the Ona Roastery once a week.
Sasa has put his certified senses to good use in the last couple of years travelling to 22 growing regions overseas for Project Origin, his program to bring green beans straight from the farm to Fyshwick for a fair price. “We actually want to do a lot more than just paying the right wages,” says Sasa. “We want to be involved with the producers as well and teach them how to improve their quality even more.” He looks for growers that unknowingly sell themselves short, sending their beans off to be blended, when they could fetch a far higher price as a single-origin coffee, as he did this year for Honduran grower Jorge Alberto Lanza Ruiz. “I got a little bit emotional just tasting it and I encouraged him to enter the Cup of Excellence competition,” Sasa recalls. Ruiz was selling the coffee straight off the bush as a whole “cherry”, to be blended, but Sasa was sure it could score over 90 and earn him more than 10 times the price. He was right, and Ruiz won the Honduras competition. “I think he got about $40 or $50 per kilo and the average coffee price is maybe $3 a kilo,” Sasa explains. “This changed his life.” The 22 affiliated growers all get their names and faces printed on cups that Ona uses in its own cafes, and Sasa continues working with them, suggesting scientific ways to push their quality even higher. In a similar way Michael, who has opened the Woden and Tuggeranong Espresso Room sites and is looking forward to opening more around Canberra next year, benefits from his unique friendship with Sasa, and both try to give their staff much more than a simple job. It’s all about maximising mutual benefit and sharing the success. “One of our favourite words is sustainability; Sasa and I both want to remain sustainable. We dont want to be replacing staff every two years. They can come to the farms with us, get educated, get excited, and there is a future back here for them.”
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