Dublin City Enterprise Board

LINK! Start-up Business Network – November Event

Clarion Hotel, IFSC

Tuesday 24^th November 2009, 6.00pm – 8.30pm

(Register* for this event: link@dceb.ie)

*For hospitality and housekeeping purposes, network members and guests must pre-register to attend DCEB networking events.  To register for the this LINK! event please email Miriam Ahern, LINK! Network manager link@dceb.ie

An Audience with:

David McKernan

Founder of Java Republic

Come along and hear David describe the highs and lows of setting up a new business venture.

This is indeed a man who is not shy about making his opinions felt – even if at times it’s one or a combination of the three E’s: exhausting, exhilarating, entrepreneurial. In a trade full of opinionated people, Java Republic stands out – there is no shortage of suppliers in the trade willing to tell you what’s what with regard to coffee, but Java Republic has distinguished itself by standing up for its beliefs in everything it does, to a degree which is quite exhausting, and always entertaining.

Founder David McKernan began his own roastery after serving his time in the Dublin coffee business, which is widely acknowledged to be a market of extremely high quality products and best-practice work – having formed his ideas about how coffee should be roasted, he then began his own roastery to do it the way he considered it should best be done.  (Did he succeed? He has won 94 Great Taste awards to date).

Then David established his own set of ethical principles about the sourcing of his coffee, much of it inspired by the shock he felt when he first visited impoverished farmers.  After turning his attention to a high-quality tea range, he then demanded that the world should know about the conditions that cocoa workers are expected to live in, and created his concept of ‘the other bean’, his ethically-sourced drinking chocolate range.

Turning his attention to questions of environmental sustainability, he set out to create ‘the first carbon-neutral coffee roastery on the planet’ just outside Dublin, which now offers an open invitation to any interested operator in the beverage trade.   The company has just won an environmental award for it.

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