A 25-year journey of creativity, craft and caffeine in Kūaotunu.
Coffee LaLa was born of a fortuitous string of events.
Surprisingly, roasting coffee is a lot like firing pottery. Potters and cooks make good roasters. From 1980 to 1996, the now Coffee LaLa roasting shed was the Kūaotunu Pottery shop. Where the roasters now sit, was the glazing room. The office desk and computer replaced the potter’s wheel. Our coffee packing table is where floor to ceiling drying shelves were.
The 1980 arrival of a South African mining company made it increasingly difficult to run our pottery. By 1986, running a pottery was close to impossible. An average day’s throwing might see a hundred mugs and jugs needing handles the next morning, or fifty bowls needing finishing. Making clay, stack-drying two tons of wood slabs, glazing the pots and loading the kiln, followed by a non-stop 51-hour firing, took a lot of time. Anti-mining protests, meetings with Council, the public, service clubs and schools stole this time. The pottery closed and Watchdog became a 24/7 unpaid occupation. We earned money working at the Coromandel Outdoor Language Centre.
‘What hits you in the head’ can lead to a new direction. Just after celebrating the year 2000 (the change of the century!), a friend came over with some green beans and asked if I knew how to roast them. I had never even seen a green coffee bean, like not knowing where eggs come from!
25 years ago
I grabbed our popcorn machine and fitted a baked bean can to it for a roasting chamber. The first roast took seven minutes. We listened, looked and smelled, then tipped it when it looked like coffee. It even tasted good. Thinking about how carefully we roast now, we were very lucky.
John Burton green coffee importers were super helpful on the phone, so I went up to Auckland for samples of different countries (origins). One popcorn machine became four. Our friends became test subjects. The coffee became an instant success.
There were only 30 roasters in New Zealand back then. It is estimated there are 192 now. Long black and flat white were new concepts. Nedilka suggested starting the business. Our pottery shop took a month of serious cleaning. I designed a simple LPG coffee roaster. My metal genius friend Alan Forbes (RIP) built it out of scraps we had lying around, such as a frying pan lid, Hillman Minx brake drum, barbecue burner and fan motor. It worked perfectly, the first time.
We won two awards at the 2001 NZ Coffee Expo with our funky home-made machine. On the way up to receive our medals, some guy shouted: “You must have some good roasting profiles”. I said “Yep!”, not even knowing what a ‘profile’ was!
Nedilka named us Coffee LaLa, meaning coffee crazy. I added ‘insanely good’ because it went with crazy.
Dave and Mel Johnston’s TuaTua restaurant in Whitianga was our first café. Dave was, without a doubt, the best chef I have ever known. We were stoked when they decided to use LaLa. When Peppertree restaurant in Coromandel approached Geoff Marsland of Wellington-based Havana Coffee, he told them to use LaLa.
“You wouldn’t get your fresh bread sent up from Wellington, would you?”
That was our second café. We were on a roll.
With the success of our 1 kg backyard roaster and increasing orders, we set out to build two 6 kg ones of the same funky design, rather than one big 15 kg. This has allowed us to roast more often, keeping it fresh. Accurate digital temperature meters improved our technique. Roasting single origins before blending makes it possible to maximise the flavour of each origin and to custom blend for our customers.
In the 11 years of NZ Coffee Expo competitions, LaLa won 18 awards, against as many as 100 companies, no cup of tea. These days, our sales are divided between home deliveries to loyal LaLa lovers, work places, café and small groceries, beach stores and local supermarkets. We roast two or three times a week and are blessed with a great staff of locals, two great roasters and three amazing office staff besides Nedilka and me – oh, and our incredible Rural Mail contractors. Without them all, there would be no LaLa.
To find out more about Coffee LaLa and place your order:
coffee@coffeelala.com
07 866 5373
coffeelala.com
Words by Mark Tugendhaft
Coromind: Coromandel’s Collaborative Magazine
Help us take Coromind Magazine to new heights by becoming a member. Click here
Change the Weather for Your Business: Advertise with Us.
Advertise your business in the whole Hauraki Coromandel in the coolest Coromandel Art Magazine, from Waihi Beach/Paeroa /Thames up to the Great Barrier Island.
Advertise Smarter, Not Harder: Get in Touch
