6 minute read
Running Hot
The Tauranga Coffee Festival is back this month, bringing with it a day of sampling, learning and finding new favourites, plus music, food, drinks and a whole lot of fun. We catch up with three of the personalities behind successful (and very different) brands that will be there on the day.
Story by Megan Raynor. Photography by Brydie Thompson
Charlie Self at work with his handsome retro-fitted roaster.
The Coffee Zealot
You know someone is truly in love with their industry when they have been working in it for nearly eighteen years and are still consumed with learning. Charlie Self is that someone. Founder and owner of Mount Maunganui’s Little Drum Coffee, he’s is a self-confessed “coffee geek” who is driven by a passion for coffee.
Charlie says the hardest part about coffee is that it’s subjective — some people just want the same flat white they’ve had for years, whereas others seek a specific taste. “I have to be able to cover a spectrum of preferences,” he says. However, for this knowledge-seeker, the challenge is part of what he loves.
It all began with artist parents. “I learnt there’s a satisfaction in being able to create something for people to enjoy,” Charlie says. This led him to hospitality and coffee, where he has become a common sight judging on the Barista Championship circuit. In April, he judged the nationals in Wellington and he has recently been asked to judge in China.
Despite Little Drum Coffee showing it can “hold itself up against the big boys”, Charlie wants it to stay the way he named it — little. “My whole ethos is to release a product I’m really proud of and enjoy the process. I want to keep Little Drum Coffee made locally for the locals.
“By keeping small, it means I can control what comes through the door and what goes over the counter,” he says.
Charlie’s fervour for learning, testing and trying new blends means even the courier has learnt about cup tasting since Little Drum’s inception. If you’ve followed Little Drum on social media, you would have seen that if the courier turns up at the right time, he’s given a spoon to test, just to get another opinion.
Talking to Charlie makes you realise how little you may know about your favourite drink. “That’s something I love about the industry, there’s always something to learn,” he says.
If you want to leave the Tauranga Coffee Festival with a brain crammed with knowledge and a bloodstream running with a new favourite blend, stop by to see Charlie for a chat.
Green coffee beans awaiting the roaster.
The Philanthropist
One of the greatest days in Sue van Schreven’s memory was also one of her strangest. “It felt weird walking out of the hospital holding another person’s child. But [it also felt] really good as we knew we were rescuing him.”
Sue van Schreven with a refugee child at an Orphans Aid school in the north of India.
In the fourteen years since Sue began Orphans Aid International — a charity that, among other great things, helps abandoned or unsafe children find a home — she has held, hugged, encouraged, celebrated, clothed, fed, bonded with and rescued many children. Yet she still feels like there’s so much more she could be doing to help. “Every child should have a family or home — there are children that aren’t even born yet that will need our help.”
Orphans Aid International is an idea that started closer to home, with her two sons. “When I had my own children it brought it to the fore,” Sue reflects. “What did I want to do with my life?”
The idea was one of those naggers, the kind that lurks around in your mind until you’re forced to decide whether you’re in or out. The decider came for Sue in 2004, standing in a Romanian maternity hospital room with four infants who spent all day, every day, confined to their cot. Looking at these abandoned children was Sue’s defining moment. “I thought, are we going to step up and bring some change to them? Are we going to do this or not?”
She’s been all-in ever since, helping children and families in six locations worldwide, including New Zealand. Running a charity is challenging and over the years they have tried different kinds of fundraisers, some of which work better than others. Sue laughs as she recalls the sheep manure they tried selling to raise money. “It’s important to find something that people enjoy and want to buy!”
Orphans Aid International Coffee.
That’s where coffee came in. Having always been fair-trade advocates and eager to sell items that benefit communities, coffee was a natural next step. Orphans Aid Coffee not only gives back to the Ugandan and Columbian families where their green beans come from, but it’s roasted and ground to order. “You’re basically getting the freshest coffee you can get,” says Sue. Customers are dispatched coffee from the roastery closest to them, and in the Bay of Plenty, that’s in the Mount.
Aside from knowing the coffee is fresh and tastes great, it’s satisfying knowing coffee addictions directly contribute to the cause. “It means people can help through drinking coffee — a good reason to have another cup!”
Danielle and Peter Gordon of Orphans Aid International will be manning the stand at the Tauranga Coffee Festival. While you are tasting, you can hear about the Ugandan community where they lived for five years. It will make your insides warm and tingly, before you’ve even taken a sip.
The New-wave Tea Merchant
Spitting out the cup of tea your mum has lovingly made you, is not the best way to earn brownie points. In Mark Webster’s case, however, it was the best way to start his business — realising he couldn’t go back to tea bags, spawned the idea for Webster’s Tea.
He hasn’t always been a leaf tea man, once upon a time drinking bags (“the instant coffee of the tea world”) by choice. An OE through Asia changed that, and introduced him to the ritual of preparation rather than the dunk-and-go nature he was used to. “I find real value in the ritual, that’s basically what sold me on loose leaf tea.”
This love was cemented in Canada, where he worked in a tea bar stocking more than 160 flavoured teas, drinking and tasting every single one.
By the time he returned home, Mark had gone from loose-leaf convert to full-on tea nerd. Following the incident with his
↑ Mark Webster in his tea garage. He will showcase Webster’s Tea at the Tauranga Coffee Festival in July.
mum’s cuppa, he began his mission to get people away from bags, but it was more than just about flavour. “I wanted to give people a natural time out, through brewing and drinking tea. We’re more and more connected to our phones and computers, and we’re forgetting the importance of taking time out,” he says.
Webster’s Tea Blood Orange Rooibos with blood orange peels and hibiscus.
Webster’s Tea includes about 13 types of tea, ranging from black and green to herbal, so it brings a variety of customers to his regular Little Big Markets stand, where we’ve spotted him chatting to a toothless biker one moment and a young mum the next. One dedicated Webster’s lover even hunted down his personal address when they’d run out and didn’t want to drink anything else. “I was ferreting away in my tea garage when they appeared!” Mark says.
Carving his own way “is a constant process of refinement,” he says and it keeps him open to new opportunities and innovative ways of doing things. “Coffee has had the attention and the cool treatment for decades, I think it’s tea’s time.”
In that spirit, last year he collaborated with Funk Estate to create Soul Train, a peach tea-infused IPA that was voted number 73 in GABS Hottest 100 Kiwi Craft Beers of 2017. “We had the beer-tea idea, then the next week it was happening. We just did it.”
This ballsy, give-it-a-go attitude also led Mark to be the first tea exhibitor at the Tauranga Coffee Festival last year. He’ll be doing it again this year, bringing some of his beloved records with him, to create an area where you can slow down, through sipping and listening. Sounds like our cup of tea.
For more details on the Tauranga Coffee Festival, see page 11.
