A conversation on design, direction and doing exactly what the heart says
The founder and accidental coffee connoisseur pours a brew to be reckoned with, but we sat down over some drinks and dining to dissect what is Kairos Coffee Assembly actually about.
When did you move to Dubai, and what brought you here?
I mean, 13, 14 years, to be honest. I did spend a couple of years in between in Germany. Which was great. But that was actually my entry into coffee as a business. So when I before ventured on my own, what I was doing was building a delivery only coffee brand.
It was called Everyday Roastery. It started out as a different brand. I joined them as a really early stage team member and scaled it up from six locations to 300 plus across the world. But that was delivery only. Which means for me, my customers were just numbers on a screen. So to go from that and really create that human connection in terms of being able to serve real people, see real people and everything. That took a long, long time.
What made you get into coffee?
What made me get into coffee was not coffee. What got me into coffee was more about being very much into design and architecture and interior. And back then this whole wave of new coffee shops was really about that. I was not a big coffee drinker before 2019, 2018, maybe something like that. But I was really heavily into finding nice places.
It led me to looking for great coffee shops around the world. So wherever I would travel, I would just find really nice, the best coffee shops in the city. And they happened to also be the ones that were really like cool to look at – really minimal. Very understated.
What is Kairos really about beyond coffee?
Coffee is something that I really believe is more of a medium to ultimately express and do what I want to be doing. It’s a great medium to connect with people, to meet up with people. It’s a great medium to have a conversation, for arts and culture and everything.
So the product that you get at Kairos is not really just a coffee – it’s basically the experience. The experience of sitting around a natural tree, being around natural plants and a very high ceiling space Anything in a warehouse is something I really love because it just feels so much more open. Which is the place that we’re used to being in Dubai, you know, they’re always primarily indoors. And even though this is indoors, we’ve tried to make it open as possible.
I could have had more seats, but we didn’t want to do that. We wanted people to find their own ways and think of how they want to interact and behave in this place.
Dubai has a huge coffee scene. Is there something missing from it?
I don’t think there is anything missing from coffee scene from a product perspective. I genuinely believe that when Dubai does coffee, Dubai does coffee really well. The region does coffee exceptionally well.
But when it comes to giving everything around that coffee is where we can be wrong sometimes. It’s not just about doing a great product, but being unaccommodating in terms of, you know, what kind of environment you want to be able to enjoy that great cup of coffee.
What was the thinking behind the design of the space?
I think the philosophy of Kiaros, what we set out to do was so much more beyond a physical space, beyond aesthetics, beyond chasing something. I went with the idea of how would I want people to feel when they come in and my favourite thing to do right now is sitting where people open the door just to notice their expressions – what do they see?
The choice when it comes to really using natural materials was a natural one. All the unfilled travertine – you can feel all the lines and holes on it because we didn’t want to fill it. This is a proper concrete block, but you’re sitting and it’s so comfortable. I think I’m most proud about the fact that we were able to put two real olive trees inside and even though they’re really mature. I have this weird way of thinking about it, that okay they will raise me and I will raise them from this point on because it’s just like setting down roots in that way.
That tabletop, for example, is a natural stone tabletop which was made by hand and shipped over in one piece. It’s huge and it’s rough to touch. It’s not polished and it was left that way intentionally. The trays that we use to serve coffee – these are again handmade oak wood trays, and when they were sanding it the wood dust was put back into it and then cast so that it looks like layers in a coffee cup.
Why is the space called Kairos Coffee Assembly rather than simply a cafe?
Coffee assembly is how we really look at the space. Part of the design process was to have a tabletop at the end of the bar where people could come together and that’s what it was like – the statement was where people could come together. So I don’t believe in being just a coffee shop or being a bakery or being a cafe.
Which is why there are no charging sockets on that table because it’s more about being really in the present, about what do you really feel when you’re seated there. It’s so natural for you to just get talking to the person sitting next to you and that is really the point of this coffee assembly.
And that’s where the name Kairos also comes. In ancient Greek, it means the right opportune moment. So whether it’s that moment of comfort, of pause, of taking a break, of connection, it could be a bunch of these different things. And for each of us, it’s going to be so different.
Why did you choose to roast the coffee yourselves?
The whole idea with Bellwether was wanting to do it ourselves. We didn’t want somebody to do it for us where they would hold the stock and it would be done in bigger batches and whatnot. Because, again, not everybody is going to treat this with that kind of care as we would.
So, when it came to doing it ourselves, we were very much about choosing a sustainable solution. I love the fact that it is fully electric because there are other roasters also, gas operated, which you could do the same thing with, but we wanted it to be electric, sustainable that way.
Also the fact that it’s a small batch roaster, it’s designed to be a shop roaster, and it’s about being transparent as well. You can literally see the beans turn green to brown, if you sit right here, you can easily see it happening throughout the day.
How important is the product itself when the space is so central to the concept?
From wanting to do this from a space first perspective, but being really so brutally honest about the product. Just because it’s a space-first idea doesn’t mean that we would cut corners or do something less from a product perspective. The product philosophy is still the same that yes we want to be doing as much as possible by ourselves, in-house – all of our bakery is made in-house, the bread that we use for French toast, the sourdough we use, the coffee.
It’s obviously a lot to do with what exactly are people drinking in Dubai as well. They love Colombia, they love Ethiopia, they love Indonesia, they love Kenya and these are very clear favorites of ours as well.
Where have you had the best cup of coffee in the world?
I think, Japan. I think any any scene in Japan, by the way, is unmatched.
Images: Supplied
Deeply passionate about food, culture and community, Manaal loves telling extraordinary stories of ordinary people. Besides sniffing out a tale to tell, her favourite things to do include binging true crime documentaries, chasing cats on the streets and curating a good outfit.
