Just over two months ago, I started working at Waterloo Gardens Teahouse based in Cardiff. This wonderful tea house was created by owner Kas Ali, a delightful gentlemen with a passion for good quality tea, and top notch coffee sourced from some amazing farmers and UK Roasters.
This isn’t my first venture into the Cafe industry. I started by spending five years with the well known company Starbucks. Many people have both good, and bad things to say about this, especially with the ‘tax scandal’ that surprised and shocked people all over the nation. Despite this, I owe them my gratitud for giving me a great work ethic, for meeting some great people (both colleagues and customers), and like many this sparking my passion for coffee.
After Starbucks, I spent a year as a teacher in a local academy working with children between the ages of 14-16 (GCSE) with ‘challenging behaviour’. This was a great experience where I got to share one of my other passions, music. Despite having a comfortable salary, and having a great career ahead of me, I decided that the job just wasn’t for me at this time of my life, and I had a hunger to get back to the hustle and bustle of a cafe, and explore the world of coffee even more.
This is where Waterloo came in. I’d heard great things from friends, wondered onto their website, and discovered that they were hiring. I delved even further into the website, made a couple of visits to meet the staff, and discovered their passion for great coffee from roasters such as Has Bean, Squaremile, James Gourmet and more. They share their knowledge of tea with honesty an experience, and it was then that I realised these guys were the real deal, and when I decided that I wanted to be a part of it.
This blog will be a little self centered, in a sense that it’s about my journey and exploits into learning more about good coffee (and tea). The title is the nickname I’ve been given in the Teahouse, pioneered by an extremely friendly moustache wearing gentlemen called Alex, and it stuck within the first day of it being given to me, despite others trying to change it.
Please keep checking back for posts, get in contact if you have any questions, or if anything I say needs correcting (I’m still learning in every aspect), and please go and check out the Waterloo Tea website (click on the image) as both there and at home is where I will be learning and doing everything I post on this blog.
Time for an espresso. (Has Bean – Costa Rica Finca La Casa Vista al Valle Red Honey Villa Sarchi)
Mad-Dog the Barista 