Bewley’s – From the sea to the air

Bewley’s coffee company is one of the oldest trading entities in the world.

Originally, they were, what some might call them, tea trade ‘privateers’ .

The founding father, Charles Bewley, managed to slip an unprecedented 2,000 chests of tea past the East India Trading Company, breaking the EITCs’ monopoly of the seas at the time.

With tea doing such a roaring business they made the sound financial investment of deciding to then branch out into coffee importing business in the late 19^th century.

The first Dublin cafe was opened in 1894, on South Great Georges Street, and then one on Westmoreland Street two years later. They didn’t stop there.

After the Irish War of Independence and the Civil War that left Dublin scarred, Ernest Bewley took over building that had previously been home to Whyte’s Academy and had housed noted pupuls such as Arthur Wellesley, the 1st Duke Of Wellington, and Robert Emmet. The site was completly refurbished and became the structure we known today as the Grafton Street Café. Over time this coffee house became a hub for intellectuals as the cafe become a cultural epicentre for Dublin’s artistic elite.

James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and Sean O’Casey were some of the patrons that came to draw inspiration from the architecture, meet with like-minded individuals and chat about life at the time, all over a cup of tea or coffee. Joyce even mentioned the place in his collection of short-stories Dubliners.

The building was inspired by Parisian and Viennese’s cafes, reports send back from the tea rooms of the Orient Far East whilst the facade of the building was created in reference to the recent discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922.

Grafton Street is now one of the longest established cafes in Dublin, as well as being one of the largest with 1 million customers annually.

The company went from strength-to-strength and just before the millennium they branched out into an American city with Irish roots before moving further west. In 1997 they acquired the Rebecca’s Café in Boston and then, a few years later, they purchased Java City – a Californian based chain with franchises in South Korea

It doesn’t stop there with trans-Atlantic expansion .

Since 2007 hotels bearing the Bewley name have started popping up in both Ireland and the UK; in 2008 they embraced sustainability and the eco-friendly ethics needed to prosper in a dynamic and ecologically responsible marketplace and they have also pledged to become Ireland’s first fully certified carbon neutral coffee company. The change will result in a major environmental and sustainability initiative which hopes to remove 3,500 tonnes of CO2 from the environment every year.

Bewley’s, under their Java City arm, then went on to win the contract with American Airlines in 2010 to be the sole supplier of coffee to the staff and customers on all flights.

Not bad – to say they started off with 2,000 chests of tea and a boat some 180 years ago