Duo create the perfect craft and coffee space in West Cork

DAVE McLaughlin and his brother Philip are part of the family who owned and operated the Bandon Craft Centre.

Dave moved away from Bandon to study and live in Dublin and when he returned he took over the premises and decided to refresh the brand and call it Grey Heron.

It is a beautiful space with a low ceiling, large windows and carefully arranged lighting. The walls are adorned with art and one side of the shop is entirely dedicated to crafts; 80% of the crafts therein are sourced from Ireland, with half of those being from Cork.

One of the walls was covered in beautiful photos and Dave explained: “Each artist gets a month on the wall, and we’re booked out for the rest of the year which is great.”

Dave always wanted to add another dimension to the shop and thought coffee would be the perfect extension.

“Since the coffee has come in, the acoustics and atmosphere in the shop has completely changed, it’s lovely to hear the machine and customer chatter going on in the background.”

Tony Speight, who moved to Bandon in 2006, is the man behind the coffee set-up.

“He’s no longer a blow in!” Dave said.

“After nearly 20 years, I think I can call myself a local now,” Tony replied.

Tony was an engineer in his past endeavours and spent two years in Australia before his arrival back to Ireland in 2006. In Melbourne, he went for a job as a barista in a café, thinking it would be easy with his bartending experience. He soon realised the swanky coffee scene in Melbourne was more complicated than he assumed.

They said, nah, you can’t do this, but we need help in the roastery and we’ll take you there.

At first, he was just bagging up retail bags of roasted beans, but his engineer’s mind was paying attention. When he returned to Ireland he decided to use what he learned in Australia and experimented with roasting beans. He went from dabbling with a frying pan, to adjusting the heat settings on a popcorn machine, to actually building his own machine.

“The actual mechanics involved with a roaster are relatively simple so it wasn’t so difficult,” said Tony.

He sought advice from local roasting pioneers, such as Mark Kingston of Golden Bean, and eventually he was able to build his own roastery in Innishannon. He keeps his original-build roaster in there as a museum piece. At first, on his tiny homemade roaster, he was only roasting for friends as all he could roast was 250 grams at a time – standard roasters are six kilos at a time.

His first customer was Diana Dodog in 2014. Diana won the first series of Ireland’s MasterChef and with her winnings she opened her food truck on Coutmacsherry beach. She was a fan of Tony’s coffee and asked if he could supply her – and so it began to slowly build organically.

Tony eventually left his “safe, well paid, engineering job” for the riskier endeavour of founding his own boutique-tyle coffee business, West Cork Coffee.

Over the next few years, his supply list grew and he started dabbling with logos and all the other business accoutrements. His coffee can be found in places like the Good Day Deli and O’Neill Coffee House.

Tony keeps all his coffees bespoke and individual for each café he supplies, which adds layers of complexity because it means every roast has to be unique. But he likes it and it’s quite rare to have a roaster that’s committed to such a delivery of product.

It can be complicated but once I have the coffee in, I can easily see which shop needs which as it’s quite easy to keep track of the stock in that sense.

During lockdown, Dave and Tony were talking about the potential for a merger and decided to go for it. Dave wanted the added dimension injection and Tony wanted a storefront and showcase space as until then he had none, rather he would exhibit his coffee through word of mouth or various small events.

They began the conversion and in November, 2021, the doors were open and the La Marzocco Linea PB, along with all the other high end equipment, began cranking out speciality coffee to the people of Bandon.

During the quiet, isolated times of the pandemic, a lot of people bought espresso machines for their home kitchens which created a market for coffee classes and Tony began Sunday morning coffee seminars in the shop.

They have been dabbling with the idea of various events also and in April, 2023, Leona Forde, Tony’s wife, held her book launch in the space. Her children’s book, Milly McCarthy Is A Complete Disaster met the world to a night of wine and tapas in Grey Heron. An undoubtedly classy venue, as two slick operators joined forces and have become a must stop for any coffee lovers of Bandon.

Find out more information at greyheronwestcork.ie and @westcorkcoffee.