Cordon Coffee exists 10 years and holds an open roastery day: “We consciously choose to only deliver within Antwerp” (Antwerp)
“The idea for an open roasting day actually came from Mustafa,” says Koen while Mustafa roasts a new batch of coffee. It is a repetitive job but Mustafa loves it very much. “I do this work halfway through. The other half of the time I work at DHL,” Mustafa smiles. “My colleagues there never understand what I am doing here. I hope to change that during the open roastery day.”
Mustafa has been working for Cordon Coffee for four years now. But the story of the Antwerp coffee roasting company goes back longer. Ten years to be exact. “At the time I was working as a student in a coffee bar and found it very fascinating. Soon I wanted to roast my own coffee. At that time, it was something that was hardly ever done in Antwerp. Today you have quite a lot of small coffee roasters in our city.”
He bought a burner, installed it in his bedroom, applied for a company number and voila, Cordon Coffee was born. “I bought and still bought my coffee beans via the port of Antwerp or via the port of Rotterdam. Few people know that a huge amount of raw beans is stored there. That is very impressive to see. I probably choose the beans that are traceable back to the farm in the country of origin.”
Coffee and culture
At the time, customers could place their order through a old-fashioned online form. “But then my story came on TV and in the end I could live off Cordon Coffee. I deliver in my coffee specialties throughout the country and also in our neighboring countries.” Coffee specialties are coffees that are created with great care and attention. “They have to achieve a certain score, but above all they are traceable, high-quality and I think you should also be able to taste which region they come from,” explains Koen.
After a few years, he moved his coffee roasting company to cultural house Het Bos. “I was given carte blanche there. I opened the Bosbar and started a non-profit organization together with some friends. With the income from the bar and coffee sales, we financed film screenings and exhibitions under the name ‘De Imagerie’, and we also financed the production of films. In this way, the cultural component could exist independently of subsidies.”
That went well for five years. “I found it extremely interesting to invest the profit of our company in culture. But I also said that the system was not ready for that. Unfortunately, for a tax inspector, that model is incomprehensible.”
And so one year of two years ago Cordon Coffee and De Imagerie parted ways. “I had no more energy for it.” The Imagerie will be continued in Het Bos in the meantime, while Koen and Mustafa’s focus today is fully on Cordon Coffee. “Mustafa is now well known in Het Bos. He was an OKAN student and worked in the Bosbar. He was actually the only one who, like me, was fascinated by roasting coffee, so I hired him.
Only in Antwerp
For Cordon Coffee, Koen found a new base in his mother-in-law’s former clay workshop in the Schipperskwartier. “At that time, Mustafa and I also started to make a good decision about the course we wanted to take with Cordon. So experienced that we have some good roasteries in every larger city. Why then should we export to Brussels, let alone to Amsterdam? And so we decided to fully focus on Antwerp. Now we only deliver in the city center, in the neighborhoods and in a part of Mortsel.”
In order to grow together, they came up with a practical way to deliver their coffee at home. “Before that, we would meet with our customers for an hour. Now we have coffee bags that fit in the letterbox. This allows us to grow within Antwerp. Every week we deliver our coffee by bicycle to about 150 addresses. In total, we have a customer base of about four hundred addresses and we also deliver to about 20 catering establishments. Our offer consists of four different coffees that change every month, depending on the seasons.”
When asked what direction they want to take with Cordon Coffee in the last ten years, Bleuzé replies: “Actually, I just want to continue how we are doing and continue to grow. Not in the typical economic sense, but we are growing in connection with our customers and in contributing to a liveable city. For example, by doing everything by bike and by working locally. We are small, but we want to do something in Antwerp. We would like to show that during our open roastery day. Then the people of Antwerp can pay us a visit and come and taste our coffee.”