What started as a hobby has transformed into a fully fledged coffee roasting business, cafe and pillar of the Mandurah community.
Purri Gould, owner of Groundswell Drivethru in Mandurah, wasn't always interested in coffee.
"I was working offshore for six or seven years. I turned into this avid coffee nerd. I discovered it along the way as a home enthusiast. Mucking around with it, I discovered you could roast coffee at home.
Read more:
"I started using a fry pan, reading all the nerdy forums and what happens when you apply heat to this seed of a coffee plant. From there, I was making my own coffee," Mr Gould said.
Working offshore, Mr Gould was often away from his young family. He describes the moment he realised he wanted to do something closer to home.
"There was a pivotal moment when I came home, my young boy, firstborn, was crawling when I left [for work] and walked up to me when I came home. I thought, 'I'm missing out'," he admitted.
This passion for coffee and drive to do something in the community led Mr Gould to buying a Kombi van, a lever coffee machine and beginning to roast coffee in an old sea container.
He experimented with innovative coffee roasting techniques and flavours, and spent four years serving coffee to the community in a park.
"It was community connection first, coffee was used as a vehicle for that," Mr Gould said.
During his time in the park, Mr Gould was constantly researching and learning what he could about coffee and roasting.
"I'd gone to Italy and discovered wood-fired roasting. I met with... this old school, over 100-year-old family company that hand built wood fired roasters. I was blown away with their kindness.
"They drove me around Italy, I met with other roasters. We ordered this machine, a 15kg custom-built wood-fired roaster.
"They gave me a recipe, the Roma, that we still use today. It's Italian in origin but finessed for the Australian palette," Mr Gould said.
Bringing both the machine and his knowledge of coffee back to Australia, Mr Gould and his mother, Mrs Gould thought they'd, "have a crack at running a cafe".
"I built my own style of modern roasting principles with a really old school traditional method. I was roasting in a shipping container with that machine for a while.
He said when the current premises had been an un-rented ex-mechanic workshop that had been empty for four years.
Snapping up the space, Mr Gould and his family got to work transforming it into the popular cafe and drive through that it is now.
"We still use a lever machine, it's mechanical and there are no pumps. People say you're mad to have a high volume cafe with a lever machine," Mr Gould laughed. But somehow, he makes it work. And rather successfully.
Mr Gould and the Groundswell crew have a focus on using local and nearby produce, in an effort to remain environmentally-friendly as well as support the community.
"Our milk comes from North Dandalup. They [Gilbert Guernseys] have 40 odd cows. We order 800 litres at a time of raw milk, they run it through a small batch pasteurisation process. We get it delivered twice a week and it's as close as you can get straight from the cow. It's like super milk. We are bypassing all the big operators and going to one small farmer," Mr Gould said.
This way of sourcing ingredients isn't conventional and certainly isn't easy.
"Milk is more expensive, it's more work and we don't charge for the extra cost. This guy [Gilbert Guernseys] is getting double the commercial rate for this milk. We aren't using plastic, everything is in glass and gets cleaned. There is a whole bunch less waste," Mr Gould said.
Not only does he focus on the immediate local community, but he prioritises coffee products from the less popular regions, and those closer to Australia, like Timor and Papua New Guinea.
"That's beneficial for us and those closer countries," he said.
As a family-run business, everybody chips in around the cafe.
"I feel guilty as a son pulling mum into this cute cafe, it's way more hectic. We have awesome staff but it's not what people think, it's not actually a retirement, you're running a business. I feel a little bit bad about that," he laughed.
"I love working with family, my wife, brother, sister-in-law are actively involved in the business. We get to all kind of hang out and the kids see it's natural to be part of the community. I feel very fortunate," Mr Gould said.
Mrs Gould keeps an eye on the operational side of the business, making sure all of Mr Gould's creative ideas are feasible.
"Purri is creative, he has brilliant ideas, a wonderful sense of community. My role is to bring the structure and business focus that will allow us to grow and survive in business through all sorts of challenging times," she said.
"With a lot of community support, great team and staff, we've been able to navigate things."
With recent COVID-19 changes, many local cafes and restaurants have had to quickly adapt their operations to be able to service the community as best they can.
Groundswell made the decision to cease dine-in service and move entirely to takeaway.
"I feel the level of responsibility, they're paying us to say good morning, take your coffee order and give an awesome service. The extra requirements around dine-in wasn't something fair to ask our staff, and even at a personal level, I didn't like the idea of separating people who can and can't come in.
"We have customers who said, 'will I be able to be served, will you make me a coffee?' For us, we're like, for now, we can do takeaway, it's difficult, but we make it work," Mr Gould said.
