Looking Back Part 4 - Up and rolling

After getting our (first and current) roasting space set up we felt the need to connect more with the coffee lovers around us and we wanted to showcase our wonderful product. Looking beyond our borders once again we saw how coffee catering was a thing going on in other parts of the world. We had seen similar things here in Switzerland but it was mainly a setup of fully automatic machines and people pushing buttons. No craft, nothing artisan and nothing specialty back then. This was in 2011.

OK, so we looked around and found a 1978 Volkswagen T2 bus for sale. It was an old Swiss Army vehicle, which had changed hands a few times and had been repainted (or spray painted) from dark Swiss Army green to NATO green but in a quite good state.

Being the "makers" we are, we went for it. A friend of ours has a auto body shop in his family and we were lucky to be able to use his workshop for taking everything apart. This was the rather easy bit and there we had some helping hands. We had the bus painted in blue-white and then it was up to us to put all the parts together again... Of course the helping hands were busy with all other stuff so we ended up doing most of the reassembling by ourselves. Including losing some of our nerves! Thankfully we found a small booklet that explains the complete build of the T2 on only a few pages_ There's really something about the times when lay people could completely repair a car!

Our initial setup in the bus was a La Marzocco GB5 espresso machine in the rear boot and this gave us a chance to take our coffee to the people. No Street Food Festivals in 2012/2013 so it was private events, local strawberry markets and expos. As it was great to take specialty coffee to the people these caterings and events led the way to our next chapter...