Introduce yourself and what you do here at Bear Bones Coffee

I’m Trent Goodwin from Bear Bones Coffee. I started Bear Bones Coffee now 10 years ago. I started off in hospitality in 1992 at a small cafe in Brisbane, a little French spot over in Clayfield. Back then we used to do the old school cappuccinos, hold it back and then spoon as much as you can on top, cover it in chocolate and hope for the best. So that was my first introduction to coffee, but over the years I had many different cafes and restaurants it’s culminated in Bear Bones 10 years ago.

 

When you think back 10 years when you first started Bear Bones, did you ever think it’d get to where it is today?

I hoped it would definitely. I had the vision for it. I think Brisbane needed more specialty coffee roasters. Back then it was our real focus was customer service. Having had cafes for many years, the idea of Bear Bones was to provide a really good coffee, but also that the service I think cafes deserve from a small boutique roaster like ourselves can provide that on a day-to-day basis. So, very happy with what we’ve done.

We know you’re very passionate around sustainability. Has that always been the case for day one?

I think the sustainability journey is something we’re all on at the moment and it’s going to continue on. We’re trying to implement new systems and processes and materials into our packaging and how we go about distribution. It’s a big challenge to really get fully sustainable, but one we’re certainly not shying away from and looking forward to particularly next year. I think a lot of new innovations coming through, particularly with coffee packaging and we’ve just got to figure a way of some electric vans to get our product to our customers a little bit more efficiently.

 

Can you tell us more about Bear Bones as a brand?

Certainly, if you have a look back through our Instagram, certainly it was very different to what it is now. It was more of a street art style, grungy vibe to it. It certainly evolved into a more, what feel a more sophisticated brand, but it’s still got that little edginess to it, which we like. We’ve been very fortunate enough to have a great artist, Andy Harwood, help us through that process. He’s been with us from day one pretty much, and he’s been instrumental in helping us develop the brand and our visual assets.

As a real fan of the brand and the name, where’d it come from? Bear Bones.

It was a business partner at the time that helped set up Bear Bones, came up with it. It was a bit of a random play on some words and once you see the bear head it kind of explains it all.

Tell us, what does the future look like now for Bear Bones? 

Look to continue to grow, we enjoy bringing new customers on board. We enjoy going through their experience of their businesses and helping them grow. Something we’d like to do that we don’t want to conquer the world. We are a boutique roastery. We don’t aim to be the biggest, still all the best, but we certainly have our place in the market, which we’re very comfortable in and I think we’re industry leaders in that segment. So that’s where we’ve got to be.

 

In terms of The Alternative Dairy Co. what was the driving factor to partner with The Alternative?

We’ve partnered with The Alternative because we found it’s great to have all the segments of alternate milks in one location with one brand. It’s great to support an Australian company. It’s obviously got a long history of providing food products to the Australian market. It’s also very competitive on price. As everyone knows it’s a great product, a great price, which is helping our customers with price pressures that are coming through, particularly in the current environment. So, it’s a great synergy between our company and The Alternative.

When someone comes to the Bare Bones space, what can they expect here, and what are you known for?

It’s just here at Bear Bones HQ, as we call it, someone can sit five meters away from out where our roasting takes place. Have a look at the roasting process while sampling our coffees, our blends, our single origins, our filters, cold brew, and having a great conversation with our staff who are very knowledgeable on our product and what we aim to achieve with our coffee. So, it’s a great experience for someone if you get the chance, pop on in to have a coffee.