“We supply NZ cafes and coffee lovers at home with premium fresh roasted coffee.”

Chiasso Coffee Roasters

Established:1997

Location: Auckland

Website: chiasso.co.nz

Business mission: “To consistently produce exceptional coffee in a sustainable way.“

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When we do things we make sure we do them well. Our coffee quality is super consistent! We are also Biogro organic certified and offer unique products such as Brewsky Nitro Coldbrew and Turmeric Latte. We’re very keen on being a responsible & sustainable company.

We have won numerous awards for our coffee over the past 20 years. Most recently in 2018 Chiasso Coffee’s Ethiopian Kochere won the Gold medal and also the Best in Class Filter Coffee Trophy at the Australian International Coffee Awards. Our Ethiopian Kochere Filter Coffee was the stand out filter coffee amongst hundreds of entries from coffee roasters from all over the world.

Chiasso Coffee has been a family run business since 1997 and it has always been my intention to continue on this tradition.

My stepfather, the founder of Chiasso became seriously ill suddenly and unexpectedly early in 2015. This meant that my wife Jaime and I had to decide very quickly and with next to no preparation that we wanted to buy the family business. The company was being well run, but was in need of a complete overhaul with regards to its online presence. Social media was practically non-existent, an area that Jaime has been working very hard to improve. The website was badly out of date and needed to be completely rebuilt.

At the same time we had outgrown our premises in Devonport and were setting up a new roastery in Hillcrest to allow the business to continue to grow. It was a busy time!

Whilst I had been involved in the company for a number of years in an operational sense the biggest challenge has been to learn the management aspects of the business. For example the company has had to go through a huge amount of compliance work, such as the National Program compliance for the new Food Act (yes, coffee counts as a food!) along with becoming Biogro Organic Certified both involved changing, improving and documenting many of our processes. The work has been well worth it though as we are now one of the very few roasters in NZ to offer genuine certified organic coffee.

Although an eventual transition was a long term goal due to my stepfather Brendan’s unexpected illness in 2015 my wife Jaime and I had to take over the business a lot earlier than we had ever anticipated. This meant we had to take on a lot of debt and risk during a time when the NZ economy was still recovering. We had to use our family home as security for the various loans and a lawyer involved at the time called our situation “extremely ambitious”. We also felt a strong sense of duty to carry on the good reputation that had been built up by sound management practices over many years previous. It was all on the line and this pressure helped drive us to succeed.

We have grown our business over 35% in 3 years, improved our GP and reduced our aged debtors significantly all while paying down debt. We have also invested significantly in our Roastery fixed assets and built a small but highly professional and capable team. With the NZ coffee awards no longer operating we’ve turned our attention to the Australian International Coffee Awards where we picked up a Best in Class trophy and Gold medal for one of our coffee’s this year.

Probably our staff. We have a small but perfectly formed highly capable, efficient and energetic team of talented people working for us. They make everything happen smoothly and we can’t thank them enough.

We have a management team of 3. We have 3 full time employees and 3 part time as well as contractors.

We use contractors for cafe and domestic customers equipment servicing and also customer training.

We have overseen the training and growth of Amy originally one of our front of house baristas who has now been with us 5 years and has become our Operations Manager. She deals with all aspects of our day to day business. While small, our company deals with wholesale and retail (both from our store and online) customers every day. There’s a lot going on! Most recently Amy attended a PPSR training seminar to upskill on the new changes happening with that aspect of her role and previous to that she attended a product knowledge session with our biggest equipment supplier Valente. Jeffery began sweeping the floors part time in our Roastery 3 years ago and is now our Head Roaster with 2 part time staff assisting him. He’s learned all aspects of roasting and making coffee along with ordering and quality control and recently completed a forklift driver training course. Our most recent full time employee Hiromi has now taken full control of our front of house barista and shop duties and is learning further aspects of the wholesale side of the business all the time.

We have numerous highly positive reviews on Google, where we have a 4.8/5 rating. We have also have a 5/5 Facebook rating where many nice things are said about us! Our customers Anna & Justin Le Cheminant from Mokaba & Riverside Cafes, Town Basin, Whangarei have this to say:

“Our 2 cafes have been customers of Chiasso Coffee for 6 years plus and 5 years respectively, using very high volumes of coffee per week over 2 blends – Milano and Dolce. Over this period the Chiasso team have without exception provided consistently great coffee, equipment, service, training, support, maintenance and delivery – nothing is a problem. We value this consistency as it gives us confidence and certainty in one element, probably the most crucial element, of our café business to the extent that we have a no questions asked replacement policy for our coffees (which is rarely ever invoked). Our customers also value the consistency as that is what they expect from a great coffee and café partnership. The values and attitudes that Chiasso bring to their business ensure that you know from the outset that they are a family-run business, they care and will not let you down. Seriously good people, seriously good coffee!”

Narly K reviewed Chiasso Coffee Roasters Devonport — 5 star October 29, 2014 · Chiasso’s Milano beans are so awesome, they improve my marriage: When my wife is grumpy, 99% of the time I know what the problem is – we’re out of Milano beans. Kids screaming, dog eating household objects, missing mortgage payments – these all pale in comparison to the look I get when my wife spots that the grinder is woefully beanless.

When I get one of *those* looks, I back towards the front door slowly, hop on my (very unmanly red 50cc) scooter, and pray like hell to the coffee gods that Chiasso is still open (if it’s not open, then it’s usually safer for me to sleep on the street – coming home without beans simply isn’t an option, and it actually smells rather nice when sleeping on the pavement outside Devonport Chocolates…) When I’m within 200m of the store, Amy’s spidey senses kick in and somehow she knows I’m on the way in. I’m barely through the Chiasso front door when I hear Amy saying “250g Milano beans – ready for you!”

As I clutch the beans on the way home, I know that my marriage is safe (at least for another week or so…) (Bonus points – the awesome young dude who works on the weekend always gives my kids a marshmallow when I’m picking up marriage-enhancing-coffee-beans. So not only does Chiasso make me a better husband, it makes me a better dad.)

That’s admittedly one of the better stories but there are some other great ones too… too many to list here. Check out our FB page!

Flexibility and the chance to spend more time with my young family. Jaime and I are lucky to have two amazing boys, aged 8 and just about 5. They are high energy and loads of fun! Recently I volunteered to coach my son’s school touch rugby team and I also manage to catch most of his basketball games as well. The flexibility of being a business owner means Jaime & I can spend quality time like this with our boys. We also get the opportunity to steer our company in the directions we choose, for example at present we are hugely focussed on compostable packaging and other ways to minimise waste such as composting our coffee chaff and ensuring coffee sacks and bags are re-used not wasted.

As a small company there is a unfortunately a finite limit to how much we can do but we’re proud to say we’re supporters of the following worthy causes:

– Leukemia & Blood Cancer NZ

– Coffee Kids

– Special Children’s Christmas

– Auckland Rescue Helicopter Trust (Westpac Rescue)

Coffee Kids is a not for profit support network for young farmers in coffee growing regions. Coffee Kids uses entrepreneurship training, mentorship, and seed capital to help young farmers see themselves as entrepreneurs, develop the skills to launch their own businesses, and connect to the global coffee industry. They collaborate with the next generation of coffee farmers to realize their full potential as part of the global coffee community. We regularly hold fund-raising days to donate to this worthy cause. Head on over to their website www.coffeekids.org for more info.

We help out and sponsor many local community events, for example recently we loaned equipment to the Vauxhall Exhibition of Fine Arts and the Wakatere Sailing Nationals as well as donating significant prizes to the Glamorgan Primary School Quiz night fundraiser as well as several other local school and community fundraisers. In conjunction with a handful of local businesses we help run the epic Wynyard Street party once a year. This is a well attended casual BBQ event which has now been running for several years – with great turn outs most years!

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