Flight Coffee is a family of driven people that work together to produce amazing coffee, while always aiming to have the best impact on the industry and the lives it connects. Their focus is on coffee appreciation, education, and development. Education is key.
Check out the Flight Coffee story below, from 'The Conception' to present.
2009 - THE CONCEPTION
"Conceived in the most classic of Kiwi beds (a garage in a small town) Richard Corney’s insatiable curiosity about how to make things better led him to try roasting his own coffee while running a coffee shop in Hawkes Bay.
He didn’t hesitate in assembling a dream team; The Flight Coffee Triceratops united with Matt Graylee and Nick Clark joining their best bud Richard in the quest to improve coffee.
2010 - THE MEMPHIS BELLE COFFEE HOUSE
To get the message of Flight Coffee to the people, a face of the company was needed. With the help of many friends, a 28 square metre space in a historically dodgy part of town was transformed into the cosiest specialty coffee shop in Wellington.
Almost entirely constructed using recycled and often free materials, Memphis Belle Coffee House opened in March 2010, and quickly began winning café awards for being chur.
2011 - THE RAW MATERIAL
The most delicious roasted coffee can only come from high-quality raw beans. So Matt headed off overseas to work and learn in as many coffee-producing countries as possible, with the goal of improving Flight Coffee’s supply chain.
Very soon it became clear that in order to have a positive impact more resources would be required, so this project evolved into a full-time green bean farming, exporting, importing, and consulting company called Raw Material, and Matt hasn't lived in NZ since.
2012 - THE HANGAR, RONAK, & HELENA
Time for the roasting operation to move to Wellington! While most wouldn’t see potential in a carpark, a bit of imagination and a ton of hard work created the Hangar, housing both the new roastery and a cafe. Like with all babies, there was some loud teething and sleepless nights, but after a ton of hard yakka the Hangar opened in September 2012.
A loyal customer from the very first day of Memphis Belle Coffee House, this is the year Ronak Patel came on board as the bean counter and in-house comic. Quartet time.
Meanwhile in Colombia, the first coffee farm transformation project was underway at Helena, and our ideal supply-chain was taking form.
2013 - THE WBC, THE NEW ROASTERY, & BETTY
After years of competing in the NZ Barista Championships, in 2013 Nick won and had the opportunity to represent NZ at the worlds. He went on to place 5th in the World Barista Championship finals. Nick was also chair of the NZ Barista Guild from 2013 to 2015.
The roastery had outgrown the Hangar within a year of moving to Wellington, so in Nov 2013 the new HQ opened around the corner. Now the Hangar could not only fill the cups of customers, but also the plates with a full functioning kitchen built where the roaster had been.
Time for another roaster upgrade, to a refurbished and tricked-out out classic Probat UG22 called Betty.
2014 - THE TREV
In late 2014 this other guy, Trev (who had been with Flight Coffee from the start) was like “I wanna be a part of this too – like for real”.
Trev pitched to buy in with the best PowerPoint presentation of all time, featuring “Boom” by P.O.D. and including the offer of tattooing each of the now five fly-boy’s faces on his milky buttocks.
Trev made partner and took the role of General Manager in NZ. Nothing in this paragraph is fabricated.
2015 - THE FARM & THE FRESHEST OF POTS
Raw Material was now in full swing with various projects underway to achieve the goal of greater price stability for coffee producers and improved income equality along the value-chain. El Fénix was bought in 2015, an 8 ha coffee farm in Colombia, to be the base for the team and a community wet mill for the neighbourhood.
In NZ it was time to go North, so in October 2015 a little tasting pop-up store on the corner of Wyndam and Queens St in Auckland was opened. Named Fresh Pots after the Dave Grohl classic Foo Fighter’s video.
2016 - THE YEAR OF UPGRADES
The factory graciously received a spruce up to align with the rest of the brand and company. On top of that, the lab has been designed and almost built. The plan is to house all quality control, training, coffee profiling and sample roasting, family movie nights, and presentations within the space.
2017 - El Fénix
In 2016, Raw Material purchased its very own coffee farm. After a few years of working producers the world over, we decided it’s time for us to lay down our own roots (yes, pun indented) and create a space that can act as a flagship farm for experiments, production concepts, and provide a model to give coffee producers stable pricing.
In December 2016, we ran a Kickstarter campaign to help fund the construction of a community wet mill in the eastern municipality of Quindío, Colombia. This project provides neighbouring farmers with greater control over their coffee quality, and much needed control of their income through a fixed price payment system.
We believe that by allowing people from different points of the value chain to cup and discuss coffee together, the market opens up. By building an advanced community wet-mill, we can make good on the promise of development through trade.
2018 - WHAT'S GOOD, AUCKLAND?
Auckland started to become a very frequent place for us to travel to so we decided it’s time to permanently put some boots on the ground. Nick Clark, one of our founders and directors packed his bags, his house, his dog (you may have seen a white ball of fluff walking around?) and headed to the big smoke.
We found an epic old warehouse on Dominion Road and in true FC style, turned it into a functioning office, training, and tasting studio. Our goal was to set up, start growing a small team so we’re able to better support our wholesale customers in the North while continuing to grow the FC brand.
2019 - New Old Mates
2019 marks 10 years for us in the coffee biz. We’ve always aimed to be the best and given we’re hitting 10 years in 2019, we started thinking about what the next 10 years would look like and how we’d like to see it unfold.
After a year’s worth of chats, meetings, coffees and good times, we made the decision that if we really want to be the best, why not work with some of the people we admire most in this industry. Cue our new business partners. Veneziano Coffee Roasters. We’ve known them since 2012. In 2013 they generously lent us their training room in Melbourne when Nick was competing in the World Barista Champs and since then, we’ve always kept in close contact, sharing knowledge and admiring what they do from a far.
We rate them as one of the best coffee business in the world and after our many meetings with them, we decided that a partnership with a company of legends is a dream come true. The work with us to help map our goals, share insights and learnings from all their years and then leave us to it to carry our out our vision - To see stable coffee pricing become the norm for cafes, offices, and home coffee drinkers in NZ."
Stay tuned for what else Flight Coffee have been up to recently.
View their story online - here.
Here at The Coffee Collective, we are excited to bring you Flight Coffee's fantastic range. Including blends, single origin and decaf, find one to suit your taste buds!
