Future focus for rejuvenated coffee company
Sally Rae,
IT was meant to be the best of times. Dan and Malina Daulton had just bought their own business, Dunedin’s longestablished Strictly Coffee Company, and were full of beans about their new venture.
But two weeks after they officially took it over in 2020, the first Covid19 lockdown struck, plummeting their world into uncertainty.
The couple were still living in Queenstown with their three young children and recalled how noone really knew what was happening.
‘‘It was horrific, I’m not going lie . . . we were thinking, ‘holy shit, we’ve just lost everything,’’ Mrs Daulton recalled.
In hindsight, as they reflect on their journey over the past several years in their Dunedin roastery, they acknowledge the onset of the pandemic was a ‘‘massive spanner in the works’’.
Had they known what was going to happen, they would not have wanted to go through it.
But now, Mr Daulton said, he would not change it.
A planned restructure of the business had happened a lot quicker than they initially envisaged and they had come out the other side in a ‘‘really exciting place’’.
It has been, as they describe, a ‘‘mad’’ couple of years, but they were still there and still smiling.
As Mr Daulton said, walking away would have been the easy option, but it was not always about choosing the easiest.
The couple, who both came from corporate backgrounds, had been in Queenstown for about nine years and loved living in such a ‘‘magic’’ place.
But they also aspired to own their own business and they wanted to stay in the South Island, ideally Otago.
Mr Daulton’s background was in relationship management and banking, while his wife — a very enthusiastic foodie — had always wanted a cafe.
Strictly Coffee ticked all of their boxes with what it provided and it was diverse and busy enough to keep them interested.
Plus there was the nostalgia from Mrs Daulton growing up in Dunedin and a business that was wellknown.
‘‘Everyone has a story about Strictly; a lot of people worked there at some point,’’ she said.
Founded in 1997, Strictly Coffee produced and supplied freshly roasted coffee for many cafes and restaurants from
Canterbury to Southland.
Mrs Daulton, who had had a variety of large leadership jobs in her own career, loved business strategy and was excited about the opportunity to reignite the brand.
After thinking it would be an ‘‘amazing adventure’’, the advent of lockdown meant there were times when she wondered ‘‘what the flipping heck? What have I done?’’.
But, on the good days, it was amazing, she said.
While they might not have been experts in the coffee industry, they were both business savvy. Mr Daulton had a strong financial background and had worked with hospitality businesses and understood how they ticked, which was hugely beneficial.
They did not have to learn how to run a business; that meant they could spend ‘‘hours and hours and hours’’ learning about the fascinating coffee industry.
The journey to reinvent the Strictly brand began during that first lockdown. It was ‘‘not a great start’’, as Mr Daulton succinctly says.
They had hundreds of kilograms of roasted coffee which normally would have been destined for tourism operators, which Mrs Daulton dropped off to the likes of rest homes, to clear the stockpile.
Their brief to local agency Firebrand was for a modern brand that put their own stamp on the business, while also respecting its past.
They chose to keep the
Strictly name, given it was so synonymous with the South, instead choosing to rename their blends with names that reflected the times and places that people thought about coffee.
What they did not want to change was the Strictly house blend, which had a big following. Mrs Daulton quipped it could have caused an ‘‘uprising’’ if they changed that taste and flavour. So they called it Unite, which was a nod to both the past and looking to the future.
Coffee was a ‘‘fascinating’’ product and — just like traceability in other food and beverage industries — people were increasingly interested in where it came from and learning about its flavour profile, she said.
A major addition to the business is a new Loring commercial coffee roaster, which was installed earlier this month.
The couple decided to get a new roaster 18 months ago and had been scheduled to receive it next year. But a cancelled New Zealand order during lockdown meant they got a call asking if they wanted it sooner.
While it was ‘‘terrible timing’’, they decided to do it. The roaster arrived in Port
Chalmers, from California via Sydney, on the day it was expected, which was welcome given the welldocumented holdups with global freight.
It was the heart of their business — ‘‘apart from the people’’ — and the Strictly team were all excited about it, as the hightech technology came with a raft of benefits.
Smoke and smell were emitted as part of the coffee roasting process. An afterburner incinerated the smoke particles and removed the smell, burning large quantities of LPG in the process.
Most Dunedin roasteries, including Strictly, were not required to use an afterburner, but the Daultons believed that was unacceptable.
‘‘We don’t want smoke and roasting coffee smell where we live, so why should everyone else be subjected to this?’’
The Loring recirculated smoke and hot air from the beans back through a closed loop where the burner removed smoke and smell.
At their current roasting volumes, they were saving 18,000kg of CO2 emissions a year, compared with a conventional roaster.
There were other major benefits, including the control they could have over the roast which was ‘‘extremely accurate’’.
Instead of having to slowly heat a drum to roast the beans, they could change the temperature of the air flowing through the beans almost immediately.
And there were also benefits to the taste. The coffee was sweeter and cleaner and they expected it would only get better as the roast profiles were finetuned.
The Loring allowed them to roast batches from 35kg of their more popular blends down to 7kg highend micro lot coffee which came with a full background story.
Although that was not the mass market product, as a team of coffee specialists they found that very rewarding, Mr Daulton said.
At this stage, they could accomplish what they wanted in their Frederick St premises; their frontofhouse coffee bar was just a stone’s throw from the university.
Ideally, bigger premises could be on the cards in a few years but, in the meantime, it was an ideal location, drawing everyone from students to tradies.
There were eight in the business, including Mr Daulton, while Mrs Daulton worked there two days a week.
Their staff were ‘‘amazing’’ and coffee as a career could be ‘‘pretty awesome’’, Mr Daulton said.
Most of the main roasteries were owned by major players. There were not many industries where local players could compete with a similar price, and the eight families were supported out of that.
Money stayed in Dunedin, helping the city to thrive, and supporting local business was in everyone’s best interests, Mr Daulton said.
This year, they celebrated Strictly’s 25th anniversary with cake and also created a special blend to mark the occasion.
The couple wanted to build relationships and work with cafes and restaurants that shared the same values as them.
They had a big focus on training and they liked relationships with businesses that had stable staff, which meant they, in turn, produced a consistently great product.
Mr Daulton said people needed to realise the flat white they ordered in a cafe was a bespoke drink being made by a highly skilled person. By hunting out those good coffees, it was enabling that business to continue to invest.
Training was important and they offered a training facility at their premises that was from wholesale through to new employees — and even general coffee aficionados wanting to perfect their own brew at home.
They had retail customers throughout New Zealand, including many in Auckland.
The next stage of their business journey was about slowing down the pace of change.
It had been a challenging period with many changes crammed into it, and now they had the business where they wanted it, Mr Daulton said.
They could be more outwardfocused now, after being forced to be so insular, and the rate of change had been ‘‘massive for everybody’’, his wife added.
Their own personal values were woven into the business and they felt a clear responsibility to look after the future.
Coffee came from a very delicate part of the world, in areas that were going to be more ravaged by climate change, and Ms Daulton felt a responsibility for the business to put its money where its mouth was.
That included ensuring its packaging was environmentally friendly, including recyclable soft plastics which were later turned into fenceposts.
With customers still in Queenstown, they relished an opportunity to return to the resort, but they were equally enjoying family life in St Clair.
They enjoyed the supportive community in Dunedin and how people got behind various ventures and events.
Strictly was supplying coffee for the Women You Can Bank On event in the city next month, which appropriately came from a source run by women.