We Didn't Start Moon Boy Because We Wanted To Roast Coffee

People often ask how Moon Boy started, and I think they're usually expecting to hear that we'd always dreamed of owning a coffee roastery.

The truth is... we did.

But it felt like a bit of a pipe dream.

When we bought a little cafe back in 2017, roasting our own coffee was something we talked about, something we were curious about, something we hoped might happen one day. We just never really believed it would.

If you'd told us then that we'd end up roasting coffee for other cafes, I honestly don't think we would've believed you.

Back then we were just trying to build a good local cafe. We were learning how to run a business, trying to remember everyone's regular order and hoping we'd sell enough coffees each week to pay the bills. We weren't thinking about coffee producers in Colombia or roast development or green coffee buying. We were thinking about tomorrow morning's service.

I still remember one conversation from those early days because, strangely enough, it's stuck with me ever since.

Our coffee supplier told us we'd need to order at least 10 kilos of coffee a week if we wanted wholesale pricing.

Ten kilos.

At the time we were probably using two.

I remember thinking, How on earth does a cafe sell ten kilos of coffee every week?

Looking back now it's almost funny because, a few years later, we were using well over seventy kilos a week through summer. At the time though, ten kilos felt enormous. It was one of those moments where you realise how much bigger the industry is than the little corner you're standing in.

The next few years taught us more than I think any course or business book ever could.

Owning a cafe isn't really about coffee. It's about people. It's remembering someone's order before they ask, noticing when a regular hasn't been in for a few days or knowing when someone just wants five quiet minutes before work. Coffee is what brings people through the door, but it's rarely the reason they keep coming back.

That lesson still shapes Moon Boy today.

Then COVID arrived and, like every hospitality business, we had absolutely no idea what was going to happen. Looking back now, that's probably when we saw just how special our little community really was. People kept showing up, buying takeaway coffees, checking in on us and supporting local businesses because they genuinely wanted them to survive.

We learnt something during that period that we've never forgotten.

People matter more than coffee.

As strange as it sounds, it was around that same time that we became completely fascinated by coffee itself. We bought our first little coffee roaster, not because we wanted to start another business, but because we were curious. We wanted to understand why one coffee tasted different from another. We wanted to know what actually happened during roasting and whether we could create something ourselves.

Looking back... we had absolutely no idea what we were doing.

Some roasts were brilliant.

Some were terrible.

Most were somewhere in the middle.

But every batch taught us something, and before long we realised we were spending every spare minute roasting, tasting, making notes and then doing it all again the next day.

Somewhere in amongst all that experimenting, Murray Street Blend was born.

We named it after the street where our cafe was because, at the time, we never imagined anyone outside those four walls would ever drink it. We just wanted something that represented us. Something we were proud to serve every day.

The response completely caught us off guard.

People kept asking for it.

They'd buy a bag to take home, then come back the following week wanting another one. Without really planning it, we'd created something that customers connected with, and that gave us the confidence to keep going.

Eventually there came a point where we had to make a decision.

We could keep buying coffee from someone else while roasting as a side project, or we could back ourselves properly and see where it led.

It was a pretty scary decision, if we're honest.

Walking away from the security of buying coffee and committing to roasting everything ourselves felt like a massive leap, especially knowing that if the coffee wasn't good enough there was nobody else to blame.

But sometimes you've just got to have a crack.

Not long afterwards we moved into a warehouse, sold the cafe and threw ourselves completely into Moon Boy. Saying goodbye to the cafe was much harder than I expected because it had given us everything. It taught us how to run a business, introduced us to lifelong customers and, in a funny sort of way, it created the opportunity that became Moon Boy.

Even now, one of the things we're most proud of is that we still supply coffee to that same cafe.

That feels pretty special.

People sometimes ask if we miss owning it.

Honestly... sometimes we do.

But we also know we made the right decision.

Everything we learnt during those years still comes with us every single day. It's the reason we care so much about consistency, why we obsess over quality and why we'll probably always see things through the eyes of a cafe owner first.

Moon Boy might be a roastery today, but at heart we'll always be hospitality people.

And maybe that's why we've built the business the way we have.

We don't just want to roast great coffee.

We want to help cafes create the same kind of places we were lucky enough to build ourselves.

When we look back now, it's funny to think it all started with a tiny little cafe ordering two kilos of coffee a week and wondering whether we'd ever reach ten.

Turns out we were asking the wrong question.

The real journey wasn't about how much coffee we'd sell.

It was about how much we still had to learn.