Kaffee Eis

History

In mid 2004 a good friend (Simon Norrie) approached us with a site that had just become vacant and wondered if it might be a good spot to sell coffee. Having always wanted to open a coffee shop we quickly decided to give it a go. With a lot of guidance from our close friend Steven Gianoutsos of Mojo coffee, and the design flair of Allistar Cox, the process was soon underway.

Our Oriental Bay store opened for the first time in December 2004. The initial plan had been for a coffee shop that, “sold a little bit of ice cream”, because of its beachside location. This changed when, while holidaying in Noosa, we were reminded how much we enjoyed gelato and lamented the fact that no one was doing it well in Wellington. From there Italian contacts were made, machinery sourced and Kaffee Eis was born

We chose the name to reflect Karl’s Austrian heritage- Kaffee Eis, pronounced café ice, which means coffee and ice cream in German.

Kaffee Eis quickly grew an extremely good reputation for both high quality gelato, which was all initially manufactured on site, and great coffee. This was greatly enhanced by some very loyal locals, many of whom we still see on a regular basis, and the positive word of mouth advertising they perpetuated.

It wasn’t long before “the little ice cream shop in Oriental Bay” couldn’t manufacture enough gelato to cover demand. So a production kitchen was set up, followed soon after by a second store on the lagoon in Frank Kitts Park (Jan 2005), and two years later a third in Courtenay Place (March 2007).

While we had never dreamed of growing so quickly, the popularity of Kaffee Eis has meant that the business has dictated its own rate of expansion - and September 2008 will see our first store outside of Wellington open, in Taupo!

We’ll keep you posted on the developments…

Karl and Christine