Kahwa Espresso Marks 20 Years with Main Manufacturing Enlargement in Florida

Inside the brand new Kahwa Espresso headquarters in St. Petersburg, Florida. Photographs courtesy of Kahwa Espresso.

After 20 years of bringing specialty espresso to Florida and past, Kahwa Espresso has entered a brand new period with a transfer right into a 24,742-square-foot company and manufacturing headquarters in St. Petersburg, Florida.

The brand new facility in an industrial space of north-central St. Pete consists of all of Kahwa’s roasting, grinding and bagging operations, and provides greater than 10,000 sq. toes of area over the corporate’s earlier headquarters, which it occupied for the previous seven years.

The roastery consists of Kahwa’s 60-kilogram Ambex machine plus a variety of different current manufacturing tools, whereas including a brand new bagging machine.  

“We have now just about doubled the capability of bagging with that machine,” Kahwa Espresso co-founder and co-owner Raphael Perrier not too long ago informed Every day Espresso Information.

Sourcing may even stay the identical because it has been for the final twenty years as Kahwa continues to work with New Jersey-based importer Royal New York, focusing partially on small cooperatives in Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala and elsewhere in Central and South America for its blends.

The brand new coaching heart at Kahwa.

Kahwa’s main gross sales channels embody wholesale accounts with eating places, cafes and inns, firm retail, e-commerce and franchising. 5 franchise areas have opened since Kahwa launched this system in 2022.

Largo-based Pridgen Realty represented Kahwa within the lease transaction, whereas actual property agency Colliers represented landlord Legacy Capital Companions, based mostly in Denver. The previous submit workplace constructing is a part of Petersburg Commerce Middle, a three-building industrial and manufacturing park.

Perrier mentioned the method of discovering the brand new location, arranging financing, transferring tools and renovating the area took a few 12 months, but the manufacturing roastery transfer required a fast tempo. 

“It took simply three days to maneuver all the things, which was, as you’ll be able to think about, a problem, as a result of we needed to hold occurring the manufacturing facet,” mentioned Perrier.

Renovations included new flooring and paint, development of a separation wall with home windows between the manufacturing and workplace areas, set up of roll-up doorways, propane infrastructure for roasting tools, and the creation of a duplicate cafe that shall be used for coaching and schooling. 

Perrier and his spouse, Sarah Perrier, based Kahwa in 2006, and the corporate describes itself because the “largest impartial espresso roaster” in Florida. Perrier mentioned the corporate will quickly develop even bigger by new hires of workplace and manufacturing workers. 

The corporate at present lists 21 cafes — 20 throughout Florida’s Gulf Coast and one in Fort Price, Texas — and greater than 800 wholesale clients. 

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