Nick Crowther was only 19 years old when he had the vision of opening his own café.
“I was planning on doing it in Melbourne, but the market was already pretty full,” he says.
Instead, he opted for Berry, a country town in New South Wales that’s a two hour drive out of Sydney – where he spent time on a family farm growing up. He says the decision to open IV Coffee was a “moment of opportunity” he couldn’t pass up.
“It’s a mix of country and city, as plenty of people of Sydney come down on weekends,” Nick says. “It’s becoming more and more like Sydney over the last few years.”
At 22, Nick opened his ideal café, IV Coffee, which he says forced him to grow up and handle the requirements of running his own business.
“It’s been a great learning experience for me,” he says. “It’s a very different lifestyle.”
For the first few months, Nick worked morning til night to ensure IV Coffee got off the ground. “I was a lot less confident back then,” he says.
Four years later, Nick has gained plenty of knowledge about the coffee industry.
“I’ve learned lots about presenting myself to customers and providing a better experience,” he says.
IV Coffee has taken another step in its business operations this past year by partnering with Paradox Coffee Roasters.
“We’re reasonably new to working alongside Paradox, but I can already tell it’s an easy relationship,” Nick says. “They handle the bigger things for us, like printing our own bags.”
IV Coffee has recently developed its own house blend with Paradox Coffee Roasters, which Nick says has been an exciting development for the café.
“Everything [with Paradox] just lined up with what we’re all about,” he says.
Nick says the café is mostly espresso- based, focusing entirely on a coffee menu. “We mostly just do batch coffee, but we still run some single origins through Paradox,” he says.
“The cold brew is my favourite to serve, since everyone thinks it’s going to be dark and heavy, but it ends up tasting nice and smooth.”
The 28-square-metre café is tucked away in the streets of Berry, but Nick says the small area adds to IV Coffee’s character.
“It gives us an upper hand due to its simplicity,” he says.
“If we ever did expand the space, it would water everything down and it would lose a bit of its charm.”
Nick says one of the highlights of running the café has been the diverse crowd that come through for a coffee.
“A lot of our customers would never normally associate with the other customers,” he says. “It’s almost like a modern day pub with the different types of people we get.”
The Berry lifestyle has brought a great sense of security to Nick, allowing him to grow his business right where he wants to be.
“I used to think I wanted a million coffee shops that would dominate the world, but I really love being here in the country,” he says.
IV Coffee
117 Queen Street, Berry, New South Wales, 2535
Open daily 6am – 2pm
This article appears in the December 2023 edition of BeanScene. Subscribe HERE.
