Our 10th Birthday

A Decade of Good Coffee for Good People

This June, Margaret River Roasting Co turned ten.

Ten years ago, the coffee scene down here barely existed. We're three hours from Perth, and back in 2016 that meant if you wanted something genuinely good in your cup, you mostly had to go without or bring your own. Isaac Kara and two mates, James Tischhauser and Craig Woods, figured the region deserved better — not pretentious, not overcomplicated, just proper, carefully roasted coffee made by people who actually cared about it. That idea became Margaret River Roasting Co, and a decade later it's still exactly what gets us up in the morning.

The party

We marked the milestone the way we mark most things around here — with the people who've actually made it possible. We threw a birthday party at our roastery café, packed the space with the community who's been ordering, subscribing, and turning up for ten years' worth of coffee, and spent the day saying thank you in person rather than just in an email footer.

Because the truth is, ten years in a small industry, in a small town, three hours from the nearest big city, isn't something you do alone. Every wholesale café that's poured our beans, every subscriber who's kept reordering, every person who's wandered into the roastery for a coffee and a chat — that's the actual reason we're still here.

The giveaway

To say thanks to everyone who couldn't make it down for the party in person, we also ran an online giveaway — a Breville coffee machine, given away to one lucky follower as a small thank-you for a decade of support. It felt like the right kind of prize: something that turns "good coffee" from a thing you buy into a ritual you actually get to build at home.

What ten years actually taught us

A few things have stuck with us the whole way through:

Good coffee and good people aren't separate goals — they're the same one. Our mantra has always been "good coffee for good people," and if anything, ten years in, we believe that more than when we started. Sourcing well, roasting with care, and treating the people around us properly all come from the same place.

Consistency matters more than perfection. Blends like Midnight, Genesis, The Daily, and Old Faithful didn't become customer favourites by accident — they became favourites because we kept showing up and roasting them the same careful way, batch after batch, for years.

Community engagement isn't a marketing line. It's shown up in real ways — being named Perth Coffee Roaster of the Year in 2021, winning the SW Business Excellence Award in 2023, being a Telstra Business Awards state finalist for sustainability in 2024, and picking up the Business Excellence Award for Community Engagement the same year. None of those happened because we chased an award. They happened because we kept doing the same things: roast well, do good where we can, bring people together.

What's next

Ten years in, we're not interested in slowing down or getting precious about it. We want to keep roasting great coffee, keep doing good where we can, and keep bringing people together over something as simple as a good cup. If you've been with us for one order or all ten years, thank you — genuinely. You're the reason there's a decade to celebrate at all.

Here's to the next one. Come say hello at the roastery café, grab a bag of the blend that got you started (ours is probably Old Faithful for a reason), or subscribe so you never run out again.