Two brothers devoted to fuelling caffeine-hungry locals since 2009 are sipping on the success of their Stafford sanctuary.
Serving over 12 millions cups of magical awakening a year, Elixir Coffee is a multi award-winning specialty roasting house carving a cult following in the competitive coffee market. Sourcing quality green beans from far-reaching corners of the globe, founders Jason and David Narciso have developed and fine-tuned mouth-watering blends to create a well-crafted, quality product.
“We import the green beans from all over the world, once we get them they're roasted within a week and then left to rest to get the best out of them. So, from when we get the green bean to when it goes into our grinder and then to your cup, it takes about a week. Five to fourteen days is optimum,” says Jason's newly wedded wife, and publicist, Deanna Narcisco.
Due to such high demand, Elixir is having to increase employees by 50 per cent over the next 12 months, on top of their team of 38. They are also procuring a new coffee bean roaster (specially hand built in Italy and shipped whole) that is three times larger than their current machine, and acquiring additional space for their roasting house at Elixir HQ.“We have outgrown our facilities in Stafford, but we were lucky to be able to consume two additional buildings beside and across from our original address at Hayward Street,” says David.
“Where we're sitting now used to be our roasting house when we first started, and we had a warehouse over at Brendale for a little while, but that wasn't open to the public. We never sort of intended to have a café side of it as well. This was a showroom for our coffee, and we would get people walking up the street asking for our coffee because they hadn't had breakfast and we would say 'oh we're just a roasting house',” adds Deanna.
“Luckily the boys have come from owning very successful cafés so they knew what they were doing. There was nothing else here and it was also a showcase for our potential wholesaler to come and try the coffee and do tastings with us.“Then demand grew and we needed more seating, so we took over the warehouse next door – which is now our roasting wholesale warehouse. And then we took over the warehouse across the road, and that's dispatch.”
While helping staff wash dishes at their mother’s café – Cosmopolitan Coffee located on Brunswick St. – David and Jason were introduced to the coffee industry at a young age. Their mother, Carmel Narciso, sought to fill the demand for specialty roasted coffee and subsequently Cosmo became the first wholesale and retail roasting house in Queensland. The brothers first opened a number of successful cafes in Brisbane’s CBD from the ages of 19 and 23, before following their dream of roasting and subsequently launching Elixir Coffee in 2009.One of the most awarded specialty coffee companies in Brisbane, Elixir Coffee has roundup a total of 24 multi-national and international medals, and most recently won a Bronze medal at the prestigious Melbourne International Coffee Expo 2015 and were also awarded 7 medals at the Sydney Royal Fine Food Show 2015.“We've won both national and international awards for our coffee. The Royal Agricultural Society of Victoria, they do the judging every year and we won quite a few awards with them. We've also won some of the national Golden Bean Awards in different categories – every single one of our blends has won awards. We have 4 blends, and in total we've won 24 awards,” says Deanna with a sense of pride.
Etched into the industrial backstreets of Stafford, Brisbane, Elixir HQ is a hidden urban oasis where visitors can watch coffee being roasted and sip on house blends while nibbling on a gourmet meal.“We all want to feel like we're a part of something, so we try to create the environment of being family-owned, and we try to instil that in all our staff. Our customers are what makes our business, so they are part of out family.
“One of our very first customers, Nell, still comes in everyday. She bought that sign for us ['Enter as strangers, leave as friends'] because she says she feels so warm and welcome when she comes in here more than when she goes home,” Deanna laughs. “Customer service is not something you get a lot of anymore, it's a dying art; we were worried that being a light industrial area a cafe wouldn't do so well but we thought 'we'll do great coffee with great service and the rest will follow'. We try to create the environment of being a family.”Elixir also offer barista courses, and sell commercial machinery to their retail and wholesale clients with complementary training.
“We do offer a couple of different styles of training. The barista training we offer is a basics course for people straight off the street that don't know much about coffee but would like to know more. Chris, our head trainer who does all our wholesale training, will take customers through that. We also offer for people to bring in their own machine – whether it's ours or not – to learn how to use it. And then we do wholesale training, so that everyone who is making our coffee understands our product and knows how to get the best out of it. We offer that complimentary to our wholesale family.”
For coffee connoisseurs – or just casual drinkers – looking to experience Elixir Coffee at home or at work, freshly roasted coffee beans and pods, and domestic machinery are available for purchase at Elixir HQ and online.Elixir HQ is located at 12 Hayward Street, Stafford.
