The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
First roastery cafe aiming to perk up Perth
The Perth duo behind Manifesto Coffee are preparing to open their new city centre cafe and on-site roastery in early 2022.
Alex Macintyre and Lukasz Lewaszkiewicz launched their coffeeroasting business during lockdown last year and recently converted all their packaging to recyclable aluminium drinks cans.
They have picked up the keys to a premises in Perth’s Princes Street arcade and are preparing it for renovation.
They plan to move their roastery at Inveralmond Industrial Estate to the city centre site.
This means the Fair City will have its first coffee shop with a roastery.
Alex and Lukasz are also on the lookout for investors to help them realise their dream.
If they can raise in the region of £100,000 to £120,000 they would be able to buy a larger capacity roaster, a die-cutter for their can labels and employ someone to concentrate solely on e-commerce.
At present, they are able to invest around £10,000 in fitting out the new shop.
The duo intend to carry out most of the work themselves and reuse and recycle as much as possible.
Director Alex, 38, said: “Investors would be awesome. We’ve got a couple of people interested and one that’s certain.
“We can actualise everything with what we’ve got, scraping through, but there’s an upper goal we’d love to achieve.
“This would allow us to get all the equipment we need and hire someone. That would be the dream.”
Born out of the first Covid lockdown, Manifesto Coffee was launched prematurely due to life plans going awry, he added.
He has worked in the coffee shop industry for 15 years in his native Sydney, London and Edinburgh, where he met Lukasz.
He added: “It was always our intention to start a roastery – but not for another year or so.
“Roastery cafes aren’t quite as common in the UK as they are in Australia or the US. It’s largely due to the cost of space.
“We started the roastery last March – largely because both Lukasz and I lost our jobs.
“My wife and I also had to cancel our six-week trip to Australia, so Lukasz and his wife had to move into our flat because they were supposed to flat sit for us.
“When we started out, we had enough money to buy a few sacks of coffee and that was it. So we bootstrapped it from nothing.”
In August, the pair began offering their beans in recyclable cans that resemble craft beer tins.
Alex says interest in the cans has increased to businesses throughout the UK.
And if he was not busy enough already, he and his wife welcomed twins into the world eight weeks ago – so he will certainly need a few cups of coffee to keep him going throughout the renovations.
They had hoped to open the cafe in mid-december but are now aiming for mid to late January.
The premises at 46 Princes Street forms part of the arcade, with archways over the front of the shop.
It is 127 square metres and Alex and Lukasz intend to split it as evenly as possible between their two operations.
Details of what will be on offer alongside the coffee are yet to be confirmed.
Alex added: “We’ve got some pretty ridiculous cookie recipes so we will do our own cookies and cakes.”