Summer always comes around fast and this year we’ve been busier than ever, planning, evolving how we do things and expanding our capabilities ready for the next event season!
As our years have been getting more hectic, space in our Social Espresso HQ has been reaching its tipping point. Our pallet space for new coffee machines had all been used up and we urgently needed more to accommodate our slick new La Marzoccos. As luck would have it, the local theatre prop company in the unit next door to us were eyeing up new spots elsewhere and we jumped at the chance to double our floorspace!
In August we finally got the keys to our shiny new unit! Only it wasn’t so shiny… and urgently required some TLC to get up to the Social Espresso standard. As you can see from the photos, there was an existing makeshift office space at the rear of the unit leftover from the previous tenants. The toilets were a dusty time capsule of the 1970s and the walls were exhibiting the all too familiar magnolia that had a chokehold on everyone’s grandparents homes in the 90s. It was safe to say we had quite a bit of work to do! The first step was demolishing the office space. Jack got to work with a sledgehammer (rather excitedly) and before long all that remained was old timber and plasterboard. Once this was removed we cleaned and painted the walls white and began on the dusty, stained warehouse floor.
With a fresh white interior and new black glossy warehouse floors it was starting to look up to scratch. We installed new pallet racking and more than doubled our available storage space. Getting a full sized forklift also meant we could fully utilise our lofty warehouse. This allowed us to expand all our setups to accommodate even larger events in our most busy periods! Alongside this we installed a brand new workbench and coffee machine servicing area which has streamlined our maintenance workflow. Happy days!
Roastery revamp
Moving all our event equipment over to our new second unit left our first unit and coffee roastery with buckets more space. We had a few ideas but landed on a full sized barista training/cupping room to focus on refining our brews to a T. Quality is very important to us and we can really make sure that we have consistently great coffees wherever our events take us!
Our old event packing area underneath our office is our training room’s new home:
As you can see, we’ve boxed off the room and installed a lovely sound diffusing glass divider. It’s still a work in progress but we’re ready for two lovely new La Marzoccos to be installed very soon…