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Missed Part 2? Catch it here.
"It was daunting. We had no idea what we were doing."
Weeks had past since the first trial roast of Timorese coffee. The remaining 970kg of the beans were quietly, greenly waiting in the back of Shannon's garage.
The question that had been pressing on everyone's minds was; "How the heck are we going to sell it?"
Buzzing, contemporary Melbourne markets seemed an obvious solution to first-time retailers. After submitting applications to multiple locations, the Wild Timor Coffee stall was finally approved to showcase at an Ashwood farmer's market.
It was a sleepy autumn day, fat flies humming around in the sun. Tensions had been high between the lads, and they were all a little sleep deprived.
"We had a marquee from Bunnings, a flimsy trestle table and a bunch of hessian sacks as our display," laughs Cameron. "My VT Commodore station wagon was crouching in the background."
A friend of neighbour Tony had taken on the task of batch roasting for the boys. Packaging consisted of small brown Kraft bags, stamped with storage instructions and best before dates.
"We brought ten bags. We sold two."
It would be a relatively successful business day amongst the series of discouraging experiences that followed.
"Some days we didn’t sell a single bean. It was... discouraging." admits Cameron.
"We couldn't help but take it personally. People didn’t understand the lengths we had been to get this coffee all the way from Timor to our market table - and how could they?"
The Wild Timor Coffee team knew from the beginning that they would have to start selling coffee in liquid form. It was just a matter of finding the opportunity.