The founders of popular Dundee coffee shop Höfn have branched out into the world of production after launching their own bean roasting company.
Graham Cameron and Mark Edwards are two of the founders of the popular city coffee shop on Bank Street.
Their new company, Kis, opened for business earlier this month and has already recorded sales across Scotland.
Based in their small unit tucked behind an office on nearby Panmure Street, Graham and Mark want to make unique coffees not just for “nerds”, but everyone and their grannies too.
Graham and Mark have ambitions for Kis to grow as large as it can. But they want to keep their local roots, working with Dundee and Tayside firms as much as possible.
Kis coffee roasters
The pair have found success, along with fellow owner Andrew McCallum, running Höfn.
And Mark used to work with Unorthodox Roasters in Kinross before opening the shop.
“It felt like the most natural progression at this point, to spread our wings a little bit and do it ourselves,” Graham said.
“Roasting coffee involves importing the beans, in their raw green form, picked in its respective country.
“It’s been dried, put into jute sacks and then shipped over to us in the UK.
“We then have to then take it out, weigh it, and then pop it in a roaster.
“And then we can then judge, essentially, how long or how fast we want to roast them, and bring out certain characteristics and roast it for certain purposes, and bring out certain characteristics.
“So, that’s what we are in control of, essentially. Bringing out the best of the beans sent over to us.
“It is a completely separate entity to Höfn, but of course can sling our beans in the shop.
“But we’re not trying to piggyback off the success of the café, in that sense.”
The team currently run their roasters in a small space behind a letting agent’s office, but have plans to move when demand picks up.
“Coffee roasters come in different sizes,” Mark adds.
“You get sample roasters, which can roast maybe 100-200g of beans at a time, to industrial roasters which can accommodate up to 200kgs a go.
“And we currently have a small, 1kg electric induction roaster. Other than the green coffee, we only really need scales for weighing in terms of specialised equipment. Essentially, roasting is a form of cooking.”
Graham adds: “We have designed all the packaging ourselves and put a lot of work into how it looks. For us, we wanted it to look appealing as possible, we describe it as ‘raw sex appeal’.”
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