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Engage Leeds will be working with North Star Coffee to offer placements and opportunities to help those they support get on the road to employment again. They are currently looking at potentially placing their first person with North Staff Coffee in a volunteering capacity in 2022.
We spoke to Holly Kragiopoulos (Co-owner and coffee specialist at North Star), to find out more about the North Star Coffee journey and what their future relationship with Engage may look like.
Hi Holly, thanks for joining me today. Can you tell me more about the North Star Coffee journey?
We were inspired to start North Star in 2013, after I did my final year university research on fair trade coffee farming and the impact it was having on communities (particularly in Kenya). Undertaking this research gave me a better understanding of the social and economic impact of working with fair trade and certified cooperatives from a producer’s perspective. Prior to that point, we didn’t have any insight over the complexity of the coffee supply chain and how many different hands were involved. Nor did we realise how detrimental the impact can be when the transaction doesn’t prioritise the producer, focusing instead on providing value for the buyer. Upon graduating and moving back to Leeds, we felt strongly that consumers needed to understand the detrimental impacts of the commodity coffee industry and how things could be different if coffee was valued as a quality product instead.
We started with a really small roaster in a tiny unit in Meanwood, where we learnt how to roast, taste and blend. That first year was super challenging but also really exciting and from there it grew and grew because people’s understanding became more in depth about coffee and how good it could taste if it was roasted fresh and to order. We grew very organically, predominantly as a wholesale supplier, and then in 2017 we set up our own coffee shop at Leeds Dock. We see the purpose of the coffee shop to be a space that people can interact with, enjoying great coffee and improving their knowledge and understanding about the coffee supply chain.
How did you get involved with Nova Bakehouse next door?
We wanted to ensure the food element in the coffee shop was just as strong as the coffee so it was a no brainer to team up with sisters Sarah Lemanski and Hannah Mather who had been taking the baking world by storm (they were recognised as baker of the year by Olive Magazine in 2018). They had a shared ethos in how they thought about the UK food supply, working to prioritise positive impact over commercial interest. Given that we had recently moved our roastery out of the coffee shop, we needed to fill the space with something for the remainder of our lease.
As a bakery, Nova aims to create delicious baked items that are incredibly nutritious, providing an alternative economy for farmers that were previously forced into a commodity system that is unsustainable for our food system. They use heritage wheat and other crops that may not be encouraged by commercial buyers but are absolutely kind of crucial for this country’s future ability to provide food for everyone.
You speak really strongly about the ethos of North Star in terms of the coffee. How is this also reflected in your shop?
Yes, so the values of social and environmental responsibility and traceability (prioritising people and planet) that we put into place from day one feeds right the way across into our coffee shop too. Every single item that’s in place in the coffee shop has been sourced with that ethos in mind, even down to the toilet roll provider or the soap we buy. It’s important to us that we’re looking after our people too right through the supply chain, whether that’s the people (the producers) at the start of our supply chain or right at the end with our staff who serve the coffee.
How did you get involved with Engage? Had you heard about the work of Engage before?
During the past year, we’d been involved in local enterprise coaching by a scheme offered with NatWest and the contact for Brent was passed on through a mutual contact who felt that the mission of Engage would match our ethos. We are still really small as a business and don’t always have constant recruitment requirements, so our partnership with Engage is not something I necessarily envisage as being massive in terms of numbers, but when opportunities do arise that are relevant to Brent’s clients, we can look at how this can be nurtured and developed. We’re also interested in maintaining a link with Engage to explore opportunities around outreach. As a business, we focus a lot of our impact further afield in the coffee producing communities that we work but we’d also like to have more of a local Leeds impact and open up our industry to a wider customer base to encourage more diverse communities to become involved with coffee and hospitality.
Sounds exciting. One last question before you go, how has Covid-19 been for you? Do you think the pandemic made you consider how you could get involved more locally?
There have been aspects that have been both negative and positive. Given that the bulk of our business is as a wholesale supplier to hospitality, the first lockdown was quite catastrophic and we had a moment thinking ‘could this be it’? Thankfully, most of our business switched online to supplying people with coffee in their homes directly, which up until that point, we’d not really ever prioritised as an area within the business. We also had other challenges to contend with in terms of the mental and emotional stress caused by changing regulations and how that affected the shop. It encouraged us to think really creatively about how we could continue fulfilling our mission as a business when we were ultimately not allowed to engage with customers too directly.
I think the positives were that this period allowed us the head space to really drill down on what we were here for as a business and gain a better understanding on how we could utilise our position within Leeds (and within the wider hospitality industry) to try and create positive change. Pre-pandemic, we’ve tended to say yes to everything but knowing that we have limited time and resources, we want to become a bit more focused in how we spend our time for maximum impact. I suppose the pandemic has been really positive in highlighting the right opportunities when they do come along for us to align with. So, when I was introduced to Engage and started talking to Brent, it was quite easy to say ‘does this fit with what we’re here to do as a business’ and it became evident that there were elements of it that really did.
More about the Employment & Engagement Service
The Employment, Engagement & Advice side of Engage offers support for those seeking work (or placements), needing benefit advice and supplying for housing (and much more). One part of this service is working collaboratively with employers who share their values of social inclusion to offer work placements to those who are ‘work ready’.
Brent Riley, Employment & Engagement worker, says “At Engage, it’s not so much about hitting targets, but rather individual people in the right place at the right time for their development. There is high potential for those we work with who we put forward for paid employment and with the right support, both from the employer as well as ourselves, we know this works. It is not only life changing for the person directly involved, but can raise aspiration within the wider family too”.