Yes,

I live in the center of Antwerp and despite not working as a full-time barista anymore,  my love for coffee is still very present,  even at work I installed my very own little setup.

My colleagues find that very funny.

I create some visual art and music in my spare time too.

It’s just a thing I do for fun but we’ll see where it gets me, if anywhere, haha…

This got me curious so I looked up your website and Instagram, and that’s where I found out about the competition.

I decided to digitalise one of my drawings and put it online that same day.

Normo would be my favorite bar.

It’s the one I discovered first some 9 years ago when studying at the University.

Every time I go there it feels a bit like coming home.

There’s always a familiar face and the coffee is amongst the best in Antwerp.

You’ll find me at Caffènation too and Viggo’s is behind my corner,

so if I don’t want to make my own coffee I’ll go and grab one there.

My work was up there too, which was really nice.

So yes,

I do agree with that.

You’ll also find me running, skating, swimming, reading, or hanging out with my cats.

Some say I cook well, too.

I just love doing it, especially making fresh pizzas or desserts.

It always makes me feel humble and grateful.

Who knows what it does for you?

Anyways, hope you have a great cup of coffee and a great day!"

where I acquired the foundational skills of being a barista.

Afterward, I returned to my home in the South of France to establish my own coffee brand.

Having taught myself the art of roasting, I opened my own roastery with two outlets in 2019.

Seeking to further refine my skills, I ventured to Belgium, particularly Antwerp,

a country renowned for its advanced coffee culture and numerous skilled roasters.

I continue my work with my roastery in France.

The demand for specialty coffee is steadily increasing,

and despite some initial lag, people are showing more interest.

There's a significant demand with limited supply at the moment.

I'm an avid sports enthusiast, spending my time cycling, running, swimming, and, of course,

continually learning about coffee tasting,

which is my true passion.

Zwendel is a collaborative space where we share facilities with various other artists.

It's a tightly-knit community, and our integration has been seamless,

benefiting from a rich environment of shared resources and creativity.

Personally,

I want to deepen my coffee-tasting skills and participate in competitions to promote Dok and expand its presence in Antwerp and Belgium.

We wanted to make a different coffee experience for Bratislava and its customers.

And I think we have done a somehow okay job. 🙂

A year after opening the coffee shop a guy came in.

Very interested in our approach and young energy.

He became our partner and since then the business started to bloom with new ideas - such as roasting our own coffee to be able to control more variables in the final experience.

That is why we work closely with 2-3 coffee importers that share the same values and quality we are looking for in building a business.

We are huge fans of batch brewing, but in the last couple of months, we’ve been really enjoying the Origami brewer and the new, trendy no-bypass brewers.

Coffee is a beautiful product, but not everyone is as obsessed with it as us.

And that’s something we like to build our marketing around.

A day-to-day human struggles 😀

But there once has been a gas pipeline explosion on our street, does that count? 😀

Cheers!"

It was a totally new thing to us, we just fell in love with hospitality and the way you can build community around coffee.

So we put all our money and time into opening it.

It did succeed, we grew also as a business and learned a lot, made lots of friends along the way.

When we started recruiting baristas, we met Roland, who became a part-time barista, then a full-time barista, and a shop manager.

When Roland joined us we talked about roasting and after a few years I told him we should rent some roasting time and try roasting, as he did have experience with it from his previous workplace.

He liked the idea, and we kept on going, just roasted for Kontakt for about a year, until we were totally satisfied with our consistency.

During Covid, we had time to further develop the idea separated the roastery from Kontakt, and created KTRL ( KONTakt+ROLand) as a separate business to share our coffee with others.

This is why we do omni roast. 

If you brew it as a filter, we would say V60, but feel free to experiment with espresso shots, especially longer ones.

The city is mostly related to hospitality for us, we either visit our own cafes and spend time there as guests, or we try to explore the city as a tourist when it is not busy, showing our kids how beautiful it is.

When we are home, we just spend lots of time outside, walk everywhere in town, bump into friends, and go biking in the woods.

Every few months, we go have breakfast there and then take a big walk in the forest.

We grew up seeing this as kids on the tapes.

At first, when we only roasted for Kontakt, we didn’t even have any design, just a drawing of Roland on a big sticker on the bags.

When we decided to grow beyond the coffee shop some of his graphic designer friends made the first designs with this style, and when we wanted a full print on the bags, me and my wife made these graphics based on those.

One easy to brew and understand, one that is a funky fruity coffee, one with a unique process or varietal, and one that is a fancy and rather expensive coffee.

This is what we stand for in coffee.

We believe that you don't need to be a scientist to brew good coffee, we try to control the variables so that you don't have to. "