By month’s end, we will have officially changed names from Single Origin Roasters to Single O. Not such a dramatic change, like say “Backrub” to “Google” or “Farrokh Bulsara” to “Freddie Mercury”. But a change to celebrate nonetheless.
Rewinding to 2003 when “single origin” was a barely known term in Sydney, and the term “hipster” referred to someone in the 1940s. We decided on the name Single Origin Roasters for our Surry Hills café and roasting business as it best captured what we set out to do – tell a crop to cup story. We grabbed singleorigin.com and served Sidamo Ethiopia through to Oaxaca Mexico.
Thanks to local chefs increasingly talking about origin of produce, Australian coffee brokers relaxing Fort-Knox-like ways to share origin information, and hipsters reincarnating in the 2000s, “single origin” became a more well-known term. It was awesome, if not a little unexpected, to see many a café and foodstore serving a ‘single origin coffee’.
“I saw your coffee there’’ and “You’re supplying those guys!” became an increasingly frequent conversation with family and friends, who would get all excited about our growth … when half of it wasn’t ours. We let them down lightly.
In the meantime, we were more commonly referring to ourselves as Single O, a nickname given to us by a bunch of customers back when we opened, which we adopted for ease when answering the phone over the hum of the roaster, knee-deep in customers. From wrapping around hashtags, to popping on menus, it grew to become our preferred name.
So it’s great to be making it official. Thanks to our customers and friends who don’t already call us “Single O” for trying to use our new name, and to clients for updating their menus. Ah, that’s the ones using our coffee in the first place.
Now just #single_o @single_o on instagram, @single_o on twitter & facebook.com/singleo.
