Why Ithaka?

Names are important, they bring with them context and expectation and lay seeds for the future. Naming a business is hard, trying to encompass all the details and possibilities of a vision, without creating limitations. We wanted something a step removed from coffee, because the product is just one part of what we're hoping to create.

A few years after winning the world championships, trying to piece together what it had meant, and what it would mean for the future, I was chatting to a friend about chasing goals, about what happens after, and ideas of journeys being more valuable than the destination - the process, the learnings, the growth that happens separate to the achievement. He introduced me to a beautiful poem by C.P. Cavafy.

Ithaka is the island home of Odysseus, one of the greatest Greek heroes, and the Odyssey is Homers telling of his long, slow return home. It can be read as an adventure, of overcoming obstacles with cunning and daring, but also as a story of powerlessness, humility and hubris. In the poem, the journey, is repositioned not as a triumphant ending, but as the reason to begin. The destination gives meaning to the journey, but it is the moving towards it itself that enriches us. We chose the name because it reflects how we understand both coffee and business: not as something to be solved or completed, but as an ongoing process of becoming.

Odysseus spends years trying to return home, facing uncertainty, temptation, failure, and reinvention along the way. Different interpretations of the story place emphasis on heroism, resilience, or fate. But one reading resonates particularly strongly with us: that the person who finally reaches Ithaka is not the same person who left.

A Beginning, Not an end

For me becoming the World Barista Champion could have been framed as an ending point, the pinnacle of a career spent working in coffee. Titles are often treated as conclusions: proof that you've reached the top.

But winning the championship did something unexpected. Instead of closing doors, it opened them.

Travel, collaboration, and exposure to coffee cultures around the world revealed how many different visions of quality could exist simultaneously. Some prioritised speed and accessibility, others ritual and hospitality, others experimentation or storytelling. Alongside inspiration came a growing sense that parts of the UK coffee landscape had drifted toward scale, uniformity and safer decisions made to support growth rather than curiosity.

The championship became not a destination, but a starting line. And a period that allowed a deeper question to emerge: What would a coffee business look like if it were built entirely around values rather than growth? Ithaka is our attempt to explore that question in real time.

The Journey Toward a Sustainable Business

When we talk about sustainability, we don't mean a single certification or marketing claim. Sustainability, is broader and more complex: economic, environmental, cultural, and human.

It means building a business that can endure without exhausting the people within it or the communities connected to it. It means long-term relationships with producers and customers. It means resisting growth that compromises quality or integrity. And it means accepting uncertainty as part of responsible decision-making.

We don't know exactly what Ithaka will look like in ten years and that uncertainty is intentional, if uncomfortable. Like Cavafy's traveller, we believe the journey must remain open. Our shape will evolve as we listen to customers, collaborate with partners, and respond to the world and space we're living in. The café, the roastery, wholesale relationships, and customer interactions , each are part of an ecosystem that will adapt over time.

But adaptation doest' mean drift. The path may change; the compass does not.

Our decisions are anchored by a few constants:

• uncompromising quality, and not just in taste, but in service and work ethic.
• responsibility to all stakeholders, from producers to customers to our team
• transparency and honesty in how we work
• and a commitment to making something we believe is worthwhile.

Small Is Beautiful

The economist E.F. Schumacher wrote in Small Is Beautiful that economies and organisations should be designed around human scale. He argued that efficiency without humanity leads to systems that function well numerically but fail socially and environmentally. That idea deeply informs Ithaka.

In coffee, scale often promises stability but can quietly demand compromise: broader sourcing, simplified offerings, safer flavour profiles. None of these are inherently wrong, but they pull businesses toward consistency at the expense of character. We believe smallness can be a strength.

• Small allows attention.
• Small allows accountability.
• Small allows relationships instead of transactions.

Being small means roasting coffees we truly believe in rather than those that merely fill capacity. It means knowing our wholesale partners personally. It means creating a café experience that prioritises curiosity and conversation over volume. It means tasting every batch, asking difficult questions, and remaining close enough to our work that it still feels human.

We are not trying to become the biggest roaster. We are trying to become a meaningful one.

Analog in a Digital World

So many modern businesses are increasingly optimised automated systems, algorithmic decisions, frictionless experiences designed for scale. While many of these tools are useful, something important gets lost when efficiency becomes the primary goal.

Ithaka aims to remain deliberately analog. Not nostalgic, but human.

Coffee is an agricultural product shaped by soil, climate, craft, and people. Its value lies in nuance and imperfection. We believe the way it is shared should reflect that reality: conversations instead of scripts, expertise offered generously, service that is attentive rather than transactional. We want the business to feel real to customers, to partners, and to ourselves. Something made with intention and care. Something that exists because it matters, not simply because it performs.

Not Knowing the Ending

Cavafy ends his poem by reminding the reader that Ithaka may not have riches left to give when you finally arrive. And that's fine because the wisdom gained along the way was always the true reward.

We don't know exactly where Ithaka will end up. We hope to evolve into forms we cannot yet imagine. We will make mistakes, learn from them, and change course when needed.

What matters is how we travel.

If, along the way, we build a sustainable business that supports meaningful careers, honours producers, inspires customers, and contributes positively, however modestly, to the wider coffee community, then Ithaka will have served its purpose.

The destination was never the point.

The journey is.