The Kaldi group

The Kaldi group comprises of Kaldi Coffee and Kaldi Espresso Bar. The group was established in 2002, when Jamie Royal and Nick Grunbaum decided that the coffee industry was well overdue for a massive shake up, in two main areas:

• Roasting the coffee beans with a unique custom designed and built fluidised bed air roasting technique, rather than the traditional drum roasters used by competitors.
• Freshness, we were amazed that most establishments were selling either imported or large commercially roasted coffee that had been roasted 12 months prior. Why drink old coffee when you could be drinking freshly roasted coffee.

Kaldi Coffee

Kaldi Coffee is a specialist wholesale coffee roasting house located in Queanbeyan NSW. Kaldi sources coffees from both Australia and various countries all around the world. As each of the beans displays very unique characteristics and qualities, we blend them at our Australian roasting house to uniquely balance the four key characteristics of coffee the flavour, acidity, body and aftertaste producing the perfect blends for our consumers. These beans are then roasted using our unique fluidised bed air roasting process.

Kaldi coffee supplies coffee and all associated coffee products including barista training. Kaldi Coffee also supplies, installs and maintains La San Marco espresso machines manufactured in Italy.

Kaldi Espresso Bar

Kaldi Espresso Bar owns and has franchised retail outlets in Canberra and across the East coast of Australia. The primary reasons for establishing the espresso bar arm is to:

• Take our coffee beans and produce the perfect cup of coffee, in an environment that we can fully control.
• Using our lower overhead structure to provide coffee services to buildings and office blocks that currently are not being catered for.
• Give us a full understanding of the coffee industry from the business owners and consumer perspective, therefore allowing us to offer our wholesale customers assistance and training to improve their business.

The Kaldi Legend

The legend tells the story of Kaldi the goat herder, who lived in Ethiopia about 300 AD. He noticed that after his goats had been eating red berries from a tree, the goats were lively and energetic until late in the evening. Kaldi tried the red berries himself and experienced the same effect. He mentioned this to the monks in the nearby monastery, who from then on took coffee to stay awake during the nightly prayer gatherings. The legend also has it that these monks discovered by chance that the beans could be roasted and that a beverage prepared from the roasted beans not only produced the same effect, but also tasted far better. The coffee beans, and the beverage made from them, were from then on regarded as a luxurious stimulant.