Who we are
We are Shai and Maya, founders of Mont58 coffee roastery. Shai has always LOVED coffee. He started roasting at home on a tiny 250g machine, and 6 years ago we took the leap, quit our full time jobs and started Mont58 from our garden shed with the vision of roasting amazing sustainable coffee and delivering it locally by bikes.
The support from our local community has been amazing, especially through lockdown when we got to meet so many of our customers when we delivered coffee to their homes and then when we opened our back garden gate and served ‘secret coffees’ to people in Blythe hill park.
Two years ago, we were lucky enough to open a second, larger roastery in Ashford in Kent, which allowed us to grow our business further and get involved in the local Kent food and drink scene as well as the London one.
Now we are ready for our next chapter
We are super excited to take the next step in our journey from a garden-shed roastery to a local coffee space that our community can enjoy! Our new shop is on Kirkdale in Sydenham, and we fell in love with it the minute we saw it. It is in a gorgeous listed building with tons of original features, lots of light and a really great vibe. Kirkdale is one of the last remaining original shop parades in the area and we are so excited about being a part of an amazing community of businesses that are bringing it back to its former glory.
We want to create a unique coffee space where people can enjoy everything coffee related. A friendly and relaxed neighbourhood coffee hub where people can taste, drink and learn about great coffee and get amazing beans for their home brewing. As well as serving coffee, we are going to prepare, pack and distribute our beans from this space - by bikes to SE London and by post further afield. It will also be a convenient collection and re-fill point for our local customers and will create more local jobs.
The larger space will give us the chance to offer brewing workshops and in the future to collaborate with a charity that would offer barista training to local young people.
So how can you help?
We are really passionate about sustainability and the power of the local economy so we are committed to doing this project in a way that will support both these areas. We are going to work with local tradespeople and specifically our shop next door neighbours Tony and Jackie from Eleven Eleven bespoke kitchens who will do all our carpentry. We are committed to trying to use reclaimed and reused items wherever possible and also to introduce a reusable cup scheme once we are open, for which we were also successful in receiving a grant from Re: London, the mayor of London sustainability fund.
All this means however, that things will cost a bit more than they would have if we just used the cheapest commercial options. Investing in this project also affects our cashflow, which we need to keep healthy while we invest in this project. So we’re asking you, our lovely community and loyal customers, to help us achieve this next step by contributing to our crowdfunder and taking advantage of our fab list of rewards.
We can’t wait to see you in person very soon!