Small Business Project: Roastery’s blend lab serves up personalised coffee
Monday, 11 May 2026
The Small Business Project is a weekly series that shines the spotlight on Kiwi small businesses doing interesting and unusual things in their industries.
Former tourism industry professional Bryn Lloyd left the corporate world to follow his dream to go into business. Lloyd tells Aimee Shaw he and his wife Carley acquired a coffee roastery in Nelson with ambitions to grow a national brand. He says more innovation is on the horizon, alongside the business’ new coffee lab, offering personalised brews.
What has your venture set out to achieve?
My wife and I have owned Rabbit Island Coffee Co, a coffee roastery business here in Nelson, coming up four years now. We've both come from different industries, and I was keen on leaving the corporate world to do something for ourselves and enable us to spend more time with the kids.
My wife was in the process of setting up an interior design business, when we came across the coffee roastery that's about 50 metres from our house. Four years on, there's been a heck of a lot of learnings and the industry as a whole has had a lot of challenges. At the start I talked to a lot of other coffee roasters that said ‘don't do it, you'd be crazy’, as green [unroasted] coffee pricing was at an all time high then, and has since doubled again.
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We wholesale to cafes all around the country and provide coffee to hotels, Airbnb properties and other customers, and we've been fortunate to have good growth in that time. We also provide coffees for walk-in customers and have a shop and retail pantry that sells 200 different product lines of items such as olive oils, chocolates and artisan goods from around the country. We've laid the foundations and got the business into a good position, but for margins, with costs skyrocketing, we've had to keep innovating.
How much time and money have you invested?
We're doing annual revenue of between the $500,000 and $1 million mark as a ball park figure, and we're we're seeing year-on-year growth of about 25%. We've been really fortunate to hit the ground running, but that growth has obviously been offset by the rising costs, so there's not a lot left over at the end of the financial year, unfortunately. That's why we need to innovate.
We bought the business for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and we’ve put a lot of time and energy into it. Because it is a small business, my wife and I are wearing multiple hats on a daily basis. We have good staff in place to help us have the space to be creative and push boundaries. But my wife had to, unfortunately, stop her interior design business as the coffee business was just going gangbusters, so we're both in it full time now.
What’s the biggest challenge your business is facing?
Green coffee beans; the prices are still going up. We heard there was going to be a bit of relief this year. However, it doesn't seem to be the way. There's a lot going on from a geopolitical point of view, but also environmental factors continue to disrupt the industry, with droughts and floods. Farmers are actually holding on to stock and not releasing it to try and get pricing that they got last year, which was at an all-time high. There was a bit of oversupply, which was going to bring the prices down, but unfortunately we're not seeing those now because it's harder to get the stock.
How has the Middle East impact conflict impacted business?
The bean supply at the moment hasn't been impacted. We have seen a 16% increase in internal transportation costs in New Zealand, so when the stock arrives in Auckland or Christchurch, it's $200 to get a pallet of coffee to Nelson, so that has gone up 16% but long term, there's talk that maybe fertilizes through to Brazil and Colombia could cause significant impact on the growers, if the strike continues to cause issues, but we're not seeing an impact on that situation right now.
We get coffee from Ethiopia, Timor Leste, Colombia and Brazil so we're not just reliant on one origin, which reduces risk.
What’s next for Rabbit Island Coffee Co?
We’re focused on growing what we call our blend lab. Up until now, coffee roasters create a blend, made up of a couple of different coffees typically from different origins. Those creations are formed by the roastery, but the blend lab gives the customer the opportunity to come up with their own blend, based on their flavour preference. Once a customer comes up with their own blend, we print out a label that has the blend name on it and ship it to their door.
Our coffee roaster has come from a viticulture background, and his taste palette and understanding of tastes, flavours and profiles is exceptional, so we're working on a few things in terms of customer workshops and programmes to get people more educated on flavours and taste. The blend lab is the start of this and we want to get people in house to explore it further.
In three years’ time you will be …
The big thing we need to move into now is educating our customer base. There's so much with coffee that is not just the caffeine hit. If you wanted a caffeine hit there are cheaper forms to get it, our business is about an experience, slowing down and enjoying that one or two cups of the day. There's more we can do to help people get the best out of it and understand what goes into making a good cup of coffee.
Because we are small, we do need to innovate; we are up against a lot of big companies with bigger budgets, so we're just trying to stay in our own lane and just keep pushing forward with our innovation.
We don't have any plans to set up an operation overseas. We want to focus on New Zealand. Any growth that we have needs to prioritise our family first. We would need significant partners overseas to lift a lot of that heavy lifting if we were to go further afield, otherwise, we're happy with our gradual growth here.
What’s one thing you wish you’d known before starting the business?
Had I known coffee prices would have doubled I may not have bought the business, but I'm glad we did. It has been tough, but we got through it. The biggest thing that would have made an impact is if Carley and I defined our roles and responsibilities earlier. We were both trying to do everything to begin with, so it took a year for us to have our own roles and responsibilities.
Most helpful piece of advice you have ever received?
We have a business coach who brings us back to our values and why we set up the business. He’s a good sounding board that we meet with every two months.
If you would like your business to feature in The Small Business Project, email Aimee Shaw at aimee.shaw@stuff.co.nz