I cannot believe I'm sitting here writing this. I had no idea that 25 years ago, an idea to start a "doing a thing" in coffee would turn out like it has.
It's been 25 years since I started Five Senses - diving headlong into an industry I knew nothing about. I'm not joking. Other than incidental experience at origin and mucking about in my kitchen turning green beans brown, grinding them in a spice grinder and then brewing them in a French press, I was completely clueless.
For those who have no idea about the journey, here is a quick summary.
Up to the end of 1999, I was a career educator. My last paid job was as a principal of an International school in Papua New Guinea. It was towards the end of that gig that my wife and I started to consider what our next life move would be. It might sound strange but unbeknown to me, the sequence of events for 20 years leading up to the end of 99' had been perfect preparation for the wild idea that we would take some of the brilliant coffee we had discovered in PNG to Australia to roast and sell to anyone who was interested. I'm not joking. That's how simple our idea was. However, if I knew back at the beginning of 2000 what I didn't know, Five Senses would never have happened - but I'm sure glad that it did. The story of Five Senses has been an incredible story of success. I'm ok to say that without feeling boastful because the reasons for that success goes well beyond what one clueless individual (me) could have achieved on my own.
As it turned out, the year 2000 was really the very beginning of specialty coffee as we know it in Australia. Australia was already known for its cafe scene primarily in Melbourne but that world was characterised by imported and old coffee from Italy and was championed as the best coffee you could find on this planet. Also, as it turned out, old non-specialty stale coffee wasn't a very high bar to beat.
Back then, the notion of fresh roasted coffee delivered within hours of being roasted was a revolutionary idea. The second revolutionary idea (which was never planned) was that I could actually tell everybody exactly what was in the bag and where it came from. That's all I had to offer and little did I realise how different it was to everything available at the time.
Five Senses Coffee looks very different now to what it was 25 years ago and it has far outgrown the picture I had in my mind of what it would be. It has a spread and depth far beyond what I ever imagined.
It's human nature to take personal credit for success that Five Senses has seen over the years but as I write this, I find myself actively guarding myself from hubris - simply because any success attributed to me personally is undeserved. Five Senses Coffee is a story more than it is a coffee company - and it's a story made up of smaller chapters led by other incredible people who all share one thing in common - the vision of impacting people positively.
I know a wordly measure of a company's success is centred around the metrics of size, profits and value but this milestone has me reflecting on the only metric that matters to me and that is, how much of a positive impact Five Senses has made on the lives it has touched in the last 25 years. Measuring us against this metric leaves me somewhat satisfied but I don't think I'll ever feel we've done enough to feel our job is done.
The thing that I do think is worth celebrating is how the importance of this vision is shared by the close-knit community of our staff, customers and suppliers and if there's anything I'm most proud of, it's this.
Happy 25 years to us and here's to the next 25!
