Coolaboola Coffee to open more coffee bars in Newcastle

Sep 23 2009 by Karen Dent, The Journal

AN independent coffee entrepreneur is expanding along the Metro system with plans for more coffee bars at Newcastle's main stations.

Ruairi McGuinness set up his first Coolaboola Coffee at Jesmond Metro station three years ago and opened his second last month at Central Station. The third is due to open in December at Monument – which has the highest footfall on the entire Metro system.

Mr McGuinness, who is from County Wexford in Ireland but came to Newcastle to study, worked in the North East as a sound engineer.

He said: “I was sitting on the Metro and wondering why there were no coffee bars in the Metro stations.

“It was the complete flipside of what I was doing before.”

He is confident his independent company can compete with the big boys of the coffee world such as Costa and Starbucks, on price and quality.

“With us being independent, it’s something you can actually trade on,” Mr McGuinness said.

“The coffee is all ethically sourced, it comes direct from the grower and that’s something we can communicate to the customers which the big brands can’t do. We’re also able to keep the quality up and do things properly.”

He also reckons that now the high street coffee shops have educated the public about different coffee options from espressos to lattes, people are more confident to try them from different places.

And what about the name?

“Coolaboola is Irish slang - it’s like ‘canny’. In Limerick, I had a friend who finished every sentence with ‘coolaboola’ and I got into the habit of using it,” said Mr McGuinness.

“We’d done the branding using a completely different name – my wife’s a designer – and I said, ‘that’s the one, coolaboola’ and my wife said ‘that’s it!’ It was one of those lightbulb moments.

“It’s very much an Irish word but it also has that Antipodean style to it.”

Coolaboola, which employs a total of six people, already has licences to open more bars on the Metro system but Mr McGuinness has no plans to rush the business’ expansion.

“We’ll see how Monument goes and take it one site at a time,” he said.