The newest player in Wollongong’s ever evolving specialty coffee market wants to take it to the next level.
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‘’What that means is really try to use a better quality graded bean and just new techniques and refined techniques that we’ve learned from some of the best baristas in the world,’’ Glass Alley owner Nathan Dobbs said.
"When we were looking for a space to go into I walked passed this alleyway and I just fell in love with it."
Dobbs is born and bred in the city but cut his teeth in Sydney, where he learned form the likes of Pablo & Rusty’s founder Saxon Wright as well as ‘’barista heavyweights’’ Tyler Walsh and Yakup Aiden.
This coffee education has whet the appetite of the 27-year-old to be at the forefront of the city’s ever evolving specialty coffee market.
‘’I really fell in love with coffee and I fell in love with specialty coffee as it is in Sydney and Melbourne and I really wanted to bring a slice of that to Wollongong but make it distinctly Wollongong,’’ he said.
‘’I really wanted to do flavours and drinks and a style of cafe that I’ve experienced elsewhere and just try to make the standard of coffee in Wollongong the next level.
‘’This means every coffee we make we are always questioning how can we make this better than people are expecting.’’
Using the services of Australian roasting champion James Craig from Zest Specialty Coffee Roasters to roast their current house filtered coffee has so far served Glass Alley well.
It’s Wollongong Central shopping centre location with added outside seating in the nearby alley on Market Street, is also a hit with customers and staff alike.
‘’When we were looking for a space to go into I walked passed this alleyway and I just fell in love with it,’’ Dobbs said.
‘’It just kind of embodied everything that I wanted to encapsulate from Melbourne and Sydney and bring to Wollongong.
‘’Originally we were looking to put a shipping container in put that didn’t work logistically.
‘’When they offered us the site at the end and allowed us to open up a big servery to serve seating right down the alley way, it was too good an offer to knock back.’’‘
He also didn’t want to miss out on being part of the ‘’exploding’’ coffee culture in Wollongong.
‘’Looking at the place that I knew when I grew up down here to when I moved away for awhile and now coming back to it, it’s almost like a different place,’’ Dobbs said.
‘’The culture in Wollongong has become more vibrant and exhilarating and we just wanted to be a part of that really.’’