I worked at Vida cafe where I washed dishes and, from there, I climbed up the ranks to become store manager when they opened their stores in the UK. And that's where the passion for coffee and the coffee conversation kind of started for me - out of that experience of being exposed to more of the coffee culture versus what I knew while I was here in South Africa. That's how my coffee passion started.

The start of a coffee shop in Khayelitsha was a bit of a scrappy one, if I can say. Where I had to sit in the cafe with no customers, while I was trying to figure out how I was going to get people into the cafe. Because I opened the business without knowing how to run a business. Not knowing how to market a business, how to advertise, or how to get people who are walking on the street to come and actually buy coffee. 

So it's quite an interesting one. Because I'm building something for me, it gives me a great opportunity because I can innovate, I can adapt into new ways of doing things versus people that have been doing stuff for the past 20 years in terms of the culture of coffee. Now, they need to change and innovate versus me because I can quickly adapt. So it's quite interesting for me.

2020 - as much as the lockdown happened, I felt like it was something that I needed as an entrepreneur.  As someone who has started a business and just managed to go through with it and then to get into a lockdown - for me it was like, "Woah. There we go. Maybe I can take a bit of a break. I can start to think about what it is that I'm doing."

With friends we came up with the idea of launching our crowdfund because there was no one to give me the money to buy the coffee machine or the grinder or the car that I was looking into. So we said, "Okay, let's do this crowdfunding thing and see how it goes," and we managed to raise about R43 000 and we got a second coffee machine and grinder, as well as branding stuff.

Launching a business or starting a business starts before you even open the doors. So you have to talk about it first, you need to share your ideas about that business and get advice from people. What could be their contribution to what you what you're doing? From that, you start to think about stuff that you didn't think about.

I'm still making mistakes. I'm not smart when it comes to money but I'm improving because every day is a training day for me. So if I made a mistake yesterday, I cannot make that mistake today. I'm improving - it's been five years now so I think I'm doing a good job. I can take that credit for myself.

There is actually a science to coffee, which is something that I'm learning as well. Then checking the grind setting, testing my shot, and if everything is ready - checking my steam. I check that everything is working fine - then I grab my portafilter and I go to the grinder. From there, I pull a shot - that means I'll get the ground coffee out from the grinder to the portafilter and from there I use my tamper to tamp, which means that I'm compressing the coffee and making it level so that when I start to brew in the machine, everything is brewing evenly.

In the whole process of making a coffee, you need to see if you are pulling that shot, if it's the right shot to take out to your customer.

The coffee that I'm about to make for you is a Hario V60. It's a coffee that I enjoy making at home too because it doesn't use a lot - you just need your hot water and your ground coffee. It's quite simple to make and I really enjoy it when I'm away from the shop.