One of Wales' biggest independent coffee roasteries is coming to Cardiff. Coaltown Coffee Roasters is opening an espresso bar in Castle Arcade in the city centre on November 14.
Coaltown is based in Ammanford, where it runs its roastery with an on-site cafe, so customers can see how their coffee is produced. The site functions as Coaltown's HQ and opened in 2018. The company also has an espresso bar in one of the town's shopping arcades.
The Cardiff coffee house will be the Coaltown's first branch outside of its hometown, founder Scott James told WalesOnline. "It's really, really exciting. It's going to be a three-month Christmas pop-up for the meantime, with the idea of us having a permanent location in Cardiff afterwards," he said.
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"There's going to be a selection of freshly roasted coffee that's going to be dropped there three times a week directly from the roastery in Ammanford. It's also going to be an area where people can collect their online orders from our website. It's also going to have locally sourced cakes from some bakeries in Cardiff."
Asked why they chose Cardiff, Scott said the capital was the "ideal next step" for Coaltown's expansion. "Cardiff for us has always been a location that we'd love to be part of. Everything about Coaltown is about bringing an industry to post-industrial towns.
"We want to open in smaller towns like Ammanford - Cardiff would probably be the only exception, because it's a city with a post-industrial past. We'll also be able to showcase our brand to a wider audience of people, and such a large amount amount of our customers are based in Cardiff."
He added that his team "massively" excited for the imminent new venture. "We cannot wait to get open. It's going to be amazing." Coaltown started life in a shed belonging to the Scott's parents. Then just a teenager, he was roasting coffee using a homemade piece of kit that his dad knocked up using repurposed materials.
Over the last eight and a half years, Coaltown has become a global brand, selling its coffee all over the world, such as in New York, Taiwan and Australia. Today it supplies about 350 wholesale customers across Wales and the UK. In 2018 it was even named one of the best places in the world for a coffee.
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