Jamestown Coffee: Coffee & culture
Jamestown Coffee started life as a coffee roastery, but with the recent opening of a café, ambitions are brewing far beyond an exceptional cup of coffee
“Art exhibitions, open mic sessions, live music with celebrated as well as up and coming artists. Performance art. Coffee cupping sessions down the line. And always a place to grab coffee that was probably roasted that morning.”
Yep, Kwasi Osei-Kusi in starting Jamestown Coffee roastery and café is celebrating the good things in life, but always with an eye on using local ingredients and local talent.
Kwasi returned to Ghana 11 years ago and immediately started to miss the cafés he’d discovered across the world, especially in New York. He knew then, he wanted to open a relaxed joint where you could get a great cup of coffee and some lovely food. He was also in little doubt, it would attract a community of like-minded individuals.
Kwasi was involved in Upcountry Coffee, one of the first roasteries in the country. He left in 2017 to start Jamestown, roasting and selling coffee to supermarkets in Accra.
“I hadn’t lost my passion to open a café and wanted customers to experience the roasting process. It also made sense to go directly to consumers by roasting, brewing and serving our own coffee in our own space, which helps to truly drive the coffee culture in a predominantly tea-drinking country.”
The idea of using local ingredients, and local resources was always the vision for Jamestown Coffee. “We wanted to add value to raw materials locally which isn’t always the case with our natural resources. We want to do great quality work locally that can compete anywhere globally. Tying it all together is my passion for design. I wanted to create a well-designed product and a well-designed space, with lots of character, in a kind of elevated but accessible, come-as-you-are setting.”
His dream of opening a café came to fruition in November 2020, not, admittedly, the easiest period. “I’m particularly proud of this in the context of Covid.
“The country has already handled the pandemic better than the vast majority of countries around the world, which tells me there isn’t anything really we can’t achieve with focus and execution. We already rank among the top cities in the world to visit but with transformational investment in infrastructure and maintaining peace and relative safety, this certainly should be one of the great cities of the world.”
And now, around a year into the new space, the sense of community is palpable. But it’s not by coincidence. “I wanted to create a space where you could buy fresh roasted local coffee and have an excellent breakfast or lunch in a unique atmosphere. But we also put on all kinds of events, including monthly art sales, open mic sessions, private dinner parties. We generally kept the walls bare and the space fairly open for such purposes.
“It’s also a great and calm atmosphere, especially on weekdays, to get some work done.And of course, it’s also our coffee roasting facility – the only open roastery and café around – so customers can witness us roasting, learn about coffee as well as the community of farmers behind it. And who doesn’t like all-day breakfast? We really put a lot of focus into our cuisine and it’s always one of the top reasons customers return.”
Follow Jamestown Coffee @jamestowncoffeegh.