Concept

Let's explore this concept in more detail: specialty coffee in the French countryside, housed in a converted outbuilding. This setting will enable experiences that simply aren't possible in today's typical cafés.

Our Vision

Our goal is to grow everything we use on-site (coffee not included), and anything which we cannot grow ourselves or are transitioning into growing ourselves will be purchased from a neighboring farm in our region. This requires a multi-faceted approach: beehives for honey, chickens for eggs, and trees producing hazelnuts and other ingredients. We want to be leveraging our space to its fullest potential—growing products for our café while also creating transformed goods for our boutique.

We plan to use our boutique space to sell our roasted coffee, honey, jams from our fruit, pickled vegetables, and nut milks, to name a few products. But, since my background prior to coffee involves artwork in many forms, we plan to sell original prints and cards as well, items which fit into the brand universe of our space, which will be created by us, and which can only be found in our boutique. We hope this will add value to our products, which will be exclusive to us, and which people will have to come and discover for themselves.

The Experience

During Covid, museums in Paris revamped their online reservation platforms, and now, even on free admission days, a simple online reservation is required. This allows them to control the flow of people and to avoid bad experiences due to overcrowded places and overwhelmed staff. By using a similar system we can be aware of the number of people arriving in advance, space out the arrival of guests - thereby avoiding the typical coffee shop rush, and cap the maximum number of people per day.

We can implement this system because we're positioned as a destination rather than relying on foot traffic. Visitors will travel from Paris and other nearby cities specifically to experience our space—comprising the coffee shop, boutique, and surrounding gardens. By limiting each time slot to fewer guests, we can interact personally with everyone who visits, creating a truly unique client experience.

This will allow us to develop our concept further to include tours of the garden space, and discussions in an edible garden on tasting notes we find in coffee, while tasting examples freshly plucked from the surrounding plants.

Sustainability Focus

Waste Management

There is a lot of waste in the daily business of a coffee shop. Water—vast amounts of it—purging machines, cleaning dishes, extracting coffee, testing recipes. This water needs to be recaptured and reused on-site, creating a mutually beneficial system in our farm/garden environment. All used water from coffee machines and dishwashers will flow into collection systems specifically designated for plant irrigation on the property. For this reason, it is vital that there is no use of harmful chemicals in the cleaning process. All equipment must be cleaned using alcohol vinegar or an ethyl alcohol solution, and citric acid. In France this is also a requirement for obtaining organic certification. This recaptured water can run back through a simple filtration system before being reused.

Coffee grounds represent another opportunity. Typically, grounds are purged when adjusting grinder settings, and spent pucks are dumped after each espresso. In our model, these used grounds won't go to waste—they'll be repurposed on-site. Again, mutually beneficial for the garden, coffee grounds will be reused in our compost and will go back into the ground meters away from where it was used for making drinks.

This will also play into our recipe creation, which is based off of the idea of reducing coffee waste from the beginning. Coffee is a product with a limited output, and as we're seeing from the recent swings in the c-market, something we shouldn't be nonchalantly chucking in the trash. This is one reason why we've chosen to work with a single coffee producer, whose product we care about as much as they do.

The same goes for any food waste. Into the compost pile, reused on-site.

Packaging and Energy

Packaging presents challenges for most coffee brands today. Local manufacturers for specialized needs—like coffee bag valves—are rare finds. We're prioritizing reusable packaging while exploring alternative materials that reduce waste from faulty bags and excess printed labels. We're also committed to avoiding overseas shipping when local options aren't available. This philosophy extends to our product distribution: our packaged coffee won't be shipped—another reason visitors must experience our space firsthand.

Energy consumption is another issue, and until we have found our future location we won't know all of the details, but our plan is to have a mix of wind and solar to offset our use. This plays into equipment selection - which we will get to eventually.

Final Thoughts

What we're creating goes beyond a café—it's an ecosystem where coffee serves as both centerpiece and catalyst. By growing our ingredients, transforming them with care, and offering them exclusively on-site, we're inviting visitors to participate in something authentic and complete. This countryside haven represents our commitment to intentional craftsmanship and sustainable practices. When guests depart, they'll carry with them more than our products—they'll take a tangible connection to the land, our philosophy, and the experience that can only exist in this specific place, at this specific moment. This is specialty coffee reimagined: not as a commodity, but as a destination worth discovering.