LONDON – 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 ÂLondon’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 ÂBritain’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 Âclueless about where to even start.”
It was to be another five years before the threesome even made it over to the Big Smoke together Â-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 Âoriginally blazed a few years back by the ÂLondon-based Kiwis behind Âpopular cafes Milk Bar and Flat White.
Today, the Caravan trio have three outlets in London and a Âturnover of $18 million a year.
They employ 200 people and hope to double their staff within the next two years.
Russell Blackstock
