When Angus originally delved into specialty around 2007, the industry was in the midst of big change, “Mark Dundon had St Ali and it was a revolution, a revolution that he’d made alongside Coffee Supreme, moving away from the old Italian heavy robusta coffee set. Melbourne had the culture that was ready for specialty more than anything; just no one had come through with it yet. The Supreme boys saw that they could do coffee here the way that they were doing it in New Zealand, so they stepped that up and Mark took it a little bit further.”

Angus’ passion for specialty coffee was sparked by a barista master class at William Angliss with the infamous Hazel de Los Reyes (of Coffee Alchemy in Sydney); during this class he cupped one of Mark Dundon’s Ethiopian Sidamos and found that when he ground the coffee it smelt like blueberries and milk chocolate, “I had no educated coffee palate and no idea, there were just these obvious, bold, natural Ethiopian coffee characteristics.”

Since then, he’s worked at an array of places including Kanteen, Mixed Business, St Ali, Dead Man Espresso, and, as of the last year has settled in at Seven Seeds. Angus stays in coffee because “…there’s so much there, and it’s so intricate, it’s so new. It’s always developing and you’re always developing along with it.”

As you would expect a lot has changed in the past five years, and it’s continuing to develop. As Angus sees it, “its more towards creating a quality cup, and more towards creating a sustainable industry across the board; not just within businesses, but also in terms of the farmers and in the way brokering agents work. Everything needs to be sustainable to be able to promote future growth within the industry. If you’re just looking out for number one you’re not going to get anywhere.”

To promote this sustainability and growth, Angus believes that we need to think long-term and invest in the potential of farms, “I think the key to doing that isn’t just as a philanthropic idea from the specialty industry but also from consumers as well, I think that’s the one thing we’re missing at the moment. We’re not getting across to customers the why, the how, and what’s possible.”

The next step is more education for consumers coming from coffee professionals. While there are public cupping and coffee tasting sessions, you can’t expect every customer to go out of their way and devote hours to learning more. It’s up to those working in coffee to try and take the extra time to educate and ignite that appreciation in the people who come in for their daily coffee.

“The industry needs consumers to be thinking that ‘This is really exceptional compared to everything else so I’m prepared to spend more money on it’, then we can get the money there [to the farms], because if the industry keeps taking bullet after bullet financially [absorbing the plethora of price increases rather than passing them along to the consumers], it’s not going to work out that way.”



All photography and articles © Eileen P Kenny