The flagship shop of a speciality coffee company celebrated its 10-year journey in a Buckinghamshire town.
While the café on Amersham’s Sycamore Road was the first ever Harris and Hoole coffee shop back in 2012, for most of the team the decade birthday marks their first few weeks working together.
Although the new manager David Rooke took over only two weeks ago, he’s already planning to move to Amersham from Henley.
He said: “Everyone’s so friendly in Amersham, and it’s been really exciting to spend more time here, build the community and get everyone involved.”
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“We want to share our love of coffee.”
Before the shop’s makeover and change in management, the café was “a bit dark and dreary and no one really wanted to come in” he said.
Now with a new time of baristas behind the machine and the walls freshly painted “everyone’s coming back in and commenting how nice it is to come in and see it being taken care of.
“We’ve been doubling our profits since I started two weeks ago, so it’s obviously made a huge difference.
“I want people to love the shop as much as I do. It’s a great shop, it’s lovely.”
“It’s like a hub the community can use.
“The coffee is amazing. It scores over 80 on the coffee scale, and I don’t think any other coffee on the hight street has a coffee bean that scales that high. Most high street coffee sits between 20 and 40 on the scale, so we’re close to the perfect bean.”
Safa Adam, the operations manager, and the rest of the management team with the company’s CEO had set up their office at the back of the café for the special day, and were all “buzzing from coffee.”
She said: “If you've had too much coffee, have a banana. The potassium helps!"
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Barista Louis Greenaway has worked at the café for three years.
He said: “Prior to this manager we were starting to slow down in business, however now it’s picking right up.
“There’s no fun sitting around when there’s no customers, it’s much better when there’s lots of people here, you can chat and so on, and when all the dogs come in.
“You’ve got a lot of coffee shops in the past few years, but it doesn’t seem to really affect us and we’re brining in a lot of people.
“I suppose we’re a specialist coffee place, more “sit down, relax and enjoy your coffee” as opposed to grab and go sort of place. “
His favourite pick from the drink’s selection was the tasty mocha, which secret recipe he refused to share.
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