Meet Anastasia Goreva, a graphic & fashion designer and digital marketing specialist – who fell in love with waves and coffee. Anastasia together with her husband Sam opened the first specialty café in Lagos, Portugal.
In Coffee&Waves Anastasia incorporated values and aspects that are important to her. Sustainability, zero waste, local sourcing and attention to quality are at the core of the café. No wonder the place has an engaged local community and even guests who visit as tourists tend to come back to work as baristas at Coffee&Waves!
Anastasia, what is your first memory with coffee?
Moving to Florence to study at the university. Everyone was going for espresso shots, no seating, Everywhere – uni, train stations, coffee shops, offices – people just standing at the counter and doing coffee shots every hour. I thought it was bizarre and I started doing the same – the morning buzz of espresso people fascinated me.
What inspired you to pursue a career in the coffee industry, and how did you get started? What did you do before coffee?
By accident actually! I am a graphic and fashion designer and digital marketing specialist. And I love to cook, I love local markets, growing vegetables, following seasons and preserving pickles and jams for the winter – that’s what my mum always did.
I met my husband, he is a surfboard shaper, we are both surfers and very conscious about the planet, ocean pollution and waste. We found a space to represent his surfboards and I thought it would be good to have a little cafe, to offer coffee and local breakfast plates with local food, organise beach clean-ups and spread the idea. This was the intention. I wanted to work with the local roaster and it was before even digging into the specialty, I didn’t know it was called specialty, I was just following my personal values – I wanted to offer people what I believed in, and so did Sam.
What inspired you to move to Portugal, and why did you choose Algarve as the location for your specialty café?
I fell in love and followed my man haha. Otherwise, I doubt I would have ended here, or even in coffee. All to blame him, surfing and opportunities. But I love it here now.
Tell us a bit about your Coffee&Waves.
My Coffee&Waves is about people who appreciate food and drinks and the work behind it, I mean not just a sandwich or a cup of coffee, but the farm work, the climate, the seasons, and the quality of the product. Less is more.
It is also about people who have a passion for what they are doing – painting, making surfboards, making wine, growing and brewing coffee, baking bread. I want to know the story and spread it and support it. I tell it to my guests or my team and they tell it to the guests. It’s word of mouth or social media – whatever you want to call it, but it wouldn’t work without the quality of a product.
My husband makes the surfboards by hand, I help him sometimes and you can see the product at Coffee&Waves. This is why. The name we saw in Hawaii was written on the t-shirt and we liked it as it just represents both of us. It’s just what we like.
What were some of the biggest challenges you faced while setting up your café in a new country, and how did you overcome them?
Building… And finding açai and sourdough bread in the Algarve in 2018, nobody had it! I was pregnant when building, we had our daughter 3 weeks before opening, so it wasn’t easy. We wouldn’t have done it without friends across Portugal and we started working with friends too, I often reminisce about these times. The beginning – I think – it’s the best time in every business story.
What kind of experience do you want your customers to have when they visit your place?
They should feel like they are having a coffee with their old friends – Jim Hoffman, Joel Tudor and Jamie Oliver in the Algarve. *Hmm, why do all of their names start with J?!* Seriously, I mean that we collect knowledge about coffee, surfing and natural simple and tasty food, we don’t like to waste it and generally we don’t like waste. We are an ocean-friendly restaurant. We love it when our guests appreciate it, and notice the details. Simplicity is about details.
How do you incorporate elements of your lifestyle into your café in Algarve?
I suppose it is surf culture, honest food, and a sustainable living culture. We start with ourselves and pass it to the team, if it works, it’s easier to pass it to others.
We get regulars and those who support our culture keep spreading it, even copying it – it’s all a good thing if it’s for a good reason. In simple words, if a worker doesn’t recycle at home, but we make him recycle at work, he’s not gonna stick around for long, he just doesn’t share my views and so our culture, we don’t have the same basic values.
For example, we don’t have any takeaway plastic, only biodegradable. And we give a discount to those who bring their cup or container. We don’t give a lid or a straw… do you really need it to drink a cold brew? We don’t waste much at all, small menu maintains better quality. Of course, we have our recipes, unique or not, but people compliment a lot our cold brew, banana bread and peanut butter oat cookies.
What is your favourite part of the day in your cafe, and why?
Summer 9 am-11 am when it’s busy, busy. It has pretty light, it smells like coffee and fresh bake. It’s not hot yet, coffee in the grinder jumps as the temperature and humidity change with every minute, milk is still very cold – all these little challenges with a queue on the way – you make hungry people happy, giving them liquid energy, recommend the best beach to visit and off you go “See you tomorrow!”. It’s a good feeling to share good energy. And they come back “tomorrow”.
How do you stay motivated and inspired to keep improving your coffee-making skills?
I drink a lot of different coffees, and also when I meet someone genuinely interested in learning more, whether a new barista to train or one of our guests.
What advice would you give to other aspiring coffee professionals who dream of opening their own specialty café, especially in a foreign country?
Just do it, but also don’t expect it’s gonna be only all about coffee.
What do you think is the most important quality for a barista to have, and why?
It is important to be open-minded and curious in life and your coffee passion and be very organized and precise in your work.
What kind of community do you hope to build around your cafe, and how do you plan to foster that sense of community?
I think we’ve done it already, now it’s up to people – isn’t it how social media works? The good thing about Coffee&Waves is that it’s not just about coffee, it’s also about design and travels and surfboard craft, healthy food, natural (low-intervention) wines, home-made style cakes and art and zero waste and the environment! The community grows and flows as our interests do.
Can you share a memorable moment or story from your time running the café that stands out to you?
There were many, of course. Maybe what comes to my mind is the way we found some of the best baristas we had – it’s always about passionate and curious people.
One of them was surfer Nick – who came in and said he was curious about coffee, so I invited him to come behind the machine and make a coffee. A few months later he moved to the country to work as a barista at Coffee&Waves.
A year later same happened with another random traveller, coffee enthusiast Andres, he brought some beans to taste in 2019, then came by in 2020 again, we exchanged contacts and in 2021 on the urgent look-out for baristas, I messaged him travelling in Spain meanwhile, if he wanted to move to Portugal and he just said: “Okay, I can come next week”. He is also a surfer now, by the way! Meeting people is the best part.
Ah, we also had a cat once stuck in our chimney (the cat is ok, by the way!).
What coffee challenges are you looking forward to? Any new projects or collaborations?
My personal challenge as a business owner is to expand and maintain my vision but not drop the quality therefore I’m always in search of people with similar vision and culture. We are planning to open new projects soon, and I would love to franchise Coffee&Waves somewhere else suitable too, so if any partners are interested out there, feel free to get in touch.
Quick Fire Questions for Anastasia Goreva:
Would you serve filter coffee with milk if asked for it?
Guilty!
Do you ever take sugar with your coffee?
No.
Espresso or Filter coffee?
Filter coffee.
Milky or Black?
Black.
Do you aim for Sweetness, Acidity, or Body?
Acidity & sweetness in balance.
Sit in or take away?
Sit in.
Favourite piece of barista equipment?
The cleaning brush
The post Barista Stories: Anastasia Goreva of Coffee&Waves, Lagos appeared first on European Coffee Trip.
A digital magazine focused on the speciality coffee culture in Europe since 2014.