Matt Swiatkiwsky – Academy Coffee

“I was a chef and loved it, but… I wasn't fantastic at it,” says Matt Swiatkiwsky, founder of small local coffee roaster Academy Coffee.

After leaving the kitchen, Matt had tried is hand in the wine industry, but coffee kept calling him back

“I tried wine for a bit, but I missed the coffee, I really loved where it was heading, so I came back and started my own thing,” he says.

Matt has spent time in the United States and studied under renowned coffee aficionado Scott Rao to fine tune his skills. He is passionate about maintaining quality in all his products.

“When I started up, I went to the effort of making sure that I had all the programs that could read every part of the roast, from the moisture of the beans through to the development time on the RORs — the Rate of Rise —so we know that the coffee is roasted perfectly all the way through, basically. And we have refractometers and all that stuff to make sure everything is perfect.”

Matt is also conscious of being able to ethically source the very best coffee beans from around the world and in his Woodward Street café you will find cards telling the story of all their producers.

“Over the last couple of years, we have made the transition to making sure we can put a face to every one of our coffees, so that we aren't buying from a commodity market,” says Matt,

“And we've gone to a lot of effort to make sure we are doing this. Last year we invested $40,000 in our Brazilian crop, so we could move away from any sort of coffee that was on the commodity market and move over the something that we could identify as our own.

“We want to make sure that we are able tell you about all of our producers… We celebrate all of the producers in Orange, all the wineries are so well known, why shouldn't we talk about the people who grow our coffee?

“It is a difficult job and I think it is something that should be celebrated… if we are working towards a better commodity, we are working towards a better world I think.”

Matt and his team are also keen to give back whenever they get the chance.

“We had one of our employees over in Ethiopia this year and we raised money and bought supplies for a school while we were there. Last year we donated money to fight violence against women,” says Matt.

“It was stuff like that I wanted to do when I started out roasting... the way I see it, the bigger we get, the more we get to do these cool things. We invest a lot of money in what we want to see, which is a bright future.”