Chris Ammermann, Miles Kirby and Laura Harper-Hinton have made it their job to offer Londoners a good flat white. Photo / Zsuzsa Zicho
Chris Ammermann, Miles Kirby and Laura Harper-Hinton have made it their job to offer Londoners a good flat white. Photo / Zsuzsa Zicho
They're making our coffee, over there, Russell Blackstock finds, when he talks to the Kiwis behind the Caravan coffee and restaurants.
For a trio of Kiwi mates it has been a long and grinding road from serving up flat whites in a tiny New Zealand restaurant to grabbing a sizeable slice of London's booming coffee market.
Miles Kirby, Chris Ammermann and Laura Harper-Hinton first met 22 years ago while scraping a living at Mondo Cucina in Wellington.
During long and boozy sessions after work the enterprising youngsters hatched a dream of one day launching their own place in Britain's capital.
Trouble is, they were skint and had no idea how to make it happen.
"Miles was the chef, Chris was on the bar and I was the maitre d'," Harper-Hinton, 39, recalls.
"When we finished our shifts we would drink too much tequila, muck about and talk about moving to London and starting our own business. But we were pretty clueless about where to even start."
It was to be another five years before the threesome even made it over to the Big Smoke together -and it took a further decade before they saved up enough cash to start up Kiwi-tinged all-day restaurant and coffee house Caravan in 2010, at the trendy Exmouth Market.
They followed a trail originally blazed a few years back by the London-based Kiwis behind popular cafes Milk Bar and Flat White.
Today, the Caravan trio have three outlets in London and a turnover of $18 million a year. They employ 200 people and hope to double their staff within the next two years.
Their eateries are also a hit with stars of music, movies and sport.
Star Wars actress Natalie Portman likes to pop in for a cuppa, as do chart-topping American singer Gwen Stefani and British Olympic diver Tom Daley.
"Speciality coffee is getting bigger and bigger and bigger in Britain and we are growing at a rate of about 40 per cent a year," Caravan's commercial director Ammermann, 49, says, "The Londoners seem to have embraced us and I think a lot of this is down to our typical Kiwi can-do approach."
It is little wonder the dynamic New Zealand trio want a bigger piece of the London coffee scene. In recent times the once tea-swilling UK has become a nation of coffee drinkers, gulping an estimated 55 million cups a day.
Over the course of a year, around two billion of these cups come from coffee shops and the market is estimated to be worth about $16 billion annually.
Chargrilled lamb cutlets chermoula at Caravan Coffee in London. Photo / Supplied
Food and retail analysts Allegra predicts by 2025 coffee shops in Britain will achieve a $28b turnover. To support this growth in revenue, the number of outlets is expected to expand, too.
The 20,728 coffee outlets recorded at the start of last year look likely to grow to in excess of 30,000 shops. According to market research experts Mintel, almost three quarters of Britons now buy coffee when out and about.
Further research from Kantar Worldwide found 80 per cent of UK coffee shop fans visit an outlet at least once a week. Some 16 per cent of hardcore coffee lovers visit every day.
Big corporate chains in Britain such as Costa and Starbucks are also still going from strength to strength. In 2010 - the same year Caravan started in London - the Costa chain had 658 coffee shops in the UK. Five years later this had more than doubled - and is rising.
In fact, all of the UK's big coffee brands, including Caffe Nero, Pret a Manger and Wild Bean Cafe, have seen growth in their number of retail outlets.
However, small and mediumsized boutique chains such as Caravan are gaining momentum and driving the comparable sales growth across the sector, ahead of the leading chains. These highly targeted operators are adopting a more advanced set of business practices to deliver authentic, artisan concepts at scale, according to Allegra.
Chris Ammermann, Laura Harper Hinton and Miles Kirby founded Caravan Coffee in London. Photo / Zsuzsa Zicho
This development prompted Allegra's group chief executive, Jeffery Young, to comment: "There has been a powerful change in industry dynamics over the last year. As boutique chains expand and drive sales of premium quality coffee, we see a shift in the competitive market set."
As coffee shops continue to replace the traditional local pub in the UK, bean fans are demanding a better quality of experience. This is good news for specialist operators such as Caravan, says leading UK coffee expert Marco Arrigo.
Arrigo is head of quality for world-renowned coffee brand Illy and he also runs the University of Coffee in Islington, which trains baristas.
"Globally, people who drink high quality coffee drink more of it than those who buy low quality," he says. "And it is difficult to pull the wool over the eyes of serious coffee drinkers these days.
"Some operators think as long as you have a bicycle hanging on the wall, you are covered in tattoos and have your sugar in an empty Spam container then you are playing the game and no one will say anything bad about you.
"But half of the so-called quality coffee I come across is shit and I wouldn't put it near my face because it is so acidic.
Londoners seem to have embraced us. I think a lot of this is down to our typical Kiwi can-do approach.
"That's why people like Caravan will do well here. They actually give a shit about what they are doing."
Caravan's growth in the past seven years has been impressive. Following the opening of its restaurant, bar and in-house coffee roastery at Exmouth Market, the company launched a second and larger outlet at King's Cross in 2012, and have just opened another at Bankside.
A recipe book Caravan: Dining All Day is out in the UK next week and the next project is to open another retail roastery and coffee education centre at a restored Victorian warehouse close to their King's Cross flagship outlet.
Caravan co-owner Kirby, 43, fell in love with the food business after starting out washing dishes at a Wellington restaurant owned by Kiwi celebrity chef Al Brown.
He went on to work for legendary New Zealand chef Peter Gordon at The Providores in London before starting up Caravan with his two old mates.
"When the three of us moved to London 17 years ago we quickly realised we did not have the money or know-how to start up our own business," Kirby says.
"But over a 10-year period we squirrelled away every penny we could and opened our first place with about $70,000.
Aubergine puree wit preserved lemon gremolata and poached eggs at Caravan Coffee in London. Photo / Supplied
"We begged and borrowed expertise from friends and when the premises at Exmouth Market were being built we lugged the bricks in ourselves. It was a real have-a-go Kiwi enterprise.
"Now we have a team who travel the world sourcing the best beans we can find, in places like Africa, Central and South America."
Not long ago, neither love nor money would get you a decent cup of coffee in London. But now the place is awash with seriously good flat whites at a raft of Kiwi-owned cafes.
Flat White was the first Antipodean-style cafe to open in the city in 2005 and introduced the eponymous beverage to Britain. The same people went on to open the famous Milk Bar nearby.
Other places like Sacred Cafe, Federation Coffee, Kaffeine and Allpress are also magnets for London coffee lovers.
But coffee expert Marco Arrigo warns Kiwis should not get too complacent.
Globally, people who drink high quality coffee drink more of it than those who buy low quality.
"We should have a British coffee scene of our own but we don't," he says. "We have a mixture of all the things from the immigrants who came here from places like Italy, Portugal, Australia and New Zealand, and that is what gets known as the London scene. The trouble with the Kiwis is they came here a few years back and opened places like Flat White and Milk Bar then sold them and buggered off back to Kiwi-land, and now they are not so good.
"To me, New Zealand coffee is also a bit under-roasted. I think this was a reaction to the days when Starbucks first arrived in London and everyone thought their coffee was over-roasted so they compensated for this.
"But most people over here don't even really know what a flat white is. In New Zealand it is something your granny would drink but in London it is viewed as being trendy.
"The flat white is a good drink but to me it is really just a strong latte. Half the people are being served a latte thinking it is a flat white. They haven't a clue that there is a difference."
Arrigo also believes many operators on the speciality coffee scene in London are over-rated.
"You are now getting people who open coffee shops and the first thing they do is buy an expensive grinder, thinking that will make their coffee taste better and make their place hip.
"They are clueless. I mean, you can't just set up a garage and pretend to be a mechanic and try to fix people's cars. You are much better getting a smaller machine and whipping it like a donkey.
"So not all of the boutique operators here are any good, Kiwi operated or otherwise."
Just across town, Caravan's Harper-Hinton and her team couldn't care less as they pile into the back of one of London's famous black cabs, en route to a meeting to discuss plans for further expansion.
There is even talk of Caravan going international - perhaps to centres such as Paris, New York or LA. Branches in Auckland or Wellington are not yet on the menu.
"I doubt if we will open Caravan in New Zealand as we have already a great coffee culture at home for 20 or 30 years," she says.
"In that respect, it would be like trying to sell ice to the Eskimos.
"Sure, we have had a great reception in London but I think we Kiwis have added a lot to the experience of Londoners as well and we are more than happy to see that continue to grow.
"At King's Cross alone we usually have about 700 people for a good old Kiwi-inspired brunch every Sunday so we must be doing something right."
