Our Story
Trade Route Coffees is a family run coffee roastery in Cape Town. There are two of us — Heather and John — and we roast every week, in small batches, to order.
Where the name came from
We live at the southern tip of Africa. Ships have rounded this corner for four hundred years, and a great deal of the world’s coffee has come past our front door on its way somewhere else.
That is where the name comes from, and the compasses and the octopus and the rest of it. Coffee has always travelled. Ours travels up the Atlantic from Brazil and Colombia and gets roasted a kilometre from the beach.
How it started
It started with a lot of coffee and a lot of talking about coffee. Eventually we bought a roaster.
Then came the part nobody tells you about: months of research, training and burnt batches before anything was good enough to sell. The first blend we got right was the Medium Roast Brazil Cerrado, and it is still the bag most people come back for.
What a family run coffee roastery can do that a shelf cannot
We roast to order. Your coffee goes on the next roast day after you order, gets packed the same morning, and goes out.
That means what reaches you is days old rather than months. It also means we cannot always turn an order round overnight — the roasting has to happen first.
We think that is the right trade, and it is the one advantage a family run coffee roastery has over a shelf in a supermarket.
What we do
- Whole bean and ground coffee, 400g and 1kg, ground to suit your machine
- Compostable capsules for Nespresso®-compatible machines, ten to a box
- Coffee machines, grinders and brewing equipment
- A mobile coffee trailer that brings the whole set-up to your event
Who drinks it
Alongside the people who order a bag at a time, we supply restaurants, guesthouses and offices around the Cape — Black Oystercatcher, Sense of Taste, Urban Playground and others.
If you pour coffee every day at work, that is our wholesale side.
Come and find us
Everything is roasted in Bloubergstrand. Collection is free if you are nearby, and The Courier Guy takes it anywhere else in the country.
Start with the coffee, or book the trailer if you have an event coming.