Interview: Deakin St Coffee Tokyo

Simon & Chie run Deakin St coffee stand, a friendly, personable small coffee shop in eastern Tokyo. Far from the bustle of central Tokyo, the duo have been supporting their local community with seasonal pour overs, espresso from AllPressEspresso and a line  of jams,  fudges and home made products.

Had the pleasure of talking to Simon of Deakin Street after they returned from a trip to Morocco. (This interview was conducted as part of a premium coffee subscription program called Kaldi in  2020 that is no longer in operation  due to COVID 19  Business Closures).

Kaldi:
I'm just curious, how long have you guys been in Japan? I mean your wife's Japanese, right?

Simon:
Yeah. So we've been here two years and the cafe has been open for about a year and a half now almost.

Kaldi:
So is this the first time you'd been outside Japan since you've been living there or have you traveled before?

Simon:
We've traveled a few times. We went back to the UK to visit my family. I'm from the UK originally and also I'm a sound artist and I do installations and we traveled to Taiwan and New Zealand with that job as well.

Kaldi:
Well, because Japan sometimes can be difficult for foreigners as well. So I'm just curious how the two years has being running a business, starting that, what made you guys start a business?

Simon:
Yeah, I think Japan, it is a bit difficult for foreigners. I don't feel like it's a simple sort of country to live in. Before coming to Japan I was in Australia and obviously the language is not an issue there at all. There is no language barrier at all of course. So that was easier because of the language, but also setting up banks and setting up phones and things like that was so much simpler in Australia. I even lived a couple of years in South Korea and I feel like even that was a little bit easier, but Japan is very kind of convoluted and too much red tape.

Simon:
I couldn't get a SIM card with a phone number until I had a resident card, which took a while. And I couldn't get a bank account that allowed me to have a credit card because I have to stay in the country for a year or so. There's a lot of like these little things that stop foreigners from feeling sort of really welcome, which is a real shame. It's a real shame.

Kaldi:
How good is your Japanese?

Simon:
My listening skills are really good. I'm perfectly fine at working in the cafe environment. I can take an order and recommend drinks to customers. But beyond that it's quite limited I'd say. I'm sort of like failing a little bit there. I should be working a bit harder on that.

Kaldi:
Japan has such a wonderful shop culture of tiny little entrepreneurial aspects.  So what made you guys start this coffee shop?

Simon:
Thank you. Yeah, we were living in Australia, as I said before, and we were both working for cafes and we were both managing cafes in Australia. And basically the plan for us was to one day open our own cafe. And we'd always talked about it like five years down the road maybe we'll move to Japan or England and open a cafe.

Simon:
But unfortunately things took ... I was applying for permanent residency in Australia or I was applying for a visa in Australia and got denied, unfortunately, by the government and we had 30 days to leave the country. It was a really quick decision. They were like, "Okay, we're not going to give you the visa. You've got to get out of the country in 30 days." It was really shocking.

Simon:
So we basically had to make a really quick decision, do we go to England or do we go to Japan? And the Japan visa laws are really loose for a spouse. Whereas England is really strict and really difficult. And if we wanted to go to England, we would have to separate for a bit while I go to England and set up a job and a life and then get Chie to come. So we decided in a spur of moment, let's just go to Japan. Let's get a visa really easily and then we can take time to decide what to do. And we were looking for apartments in Tokyo because I already got a job in Tokyo already, which was really great. Actually, I managed to scrape that really quickly. And we just came-

Kaldi:
What was that job?

Simon:
It was working for All Press Espresso.

Kaldi:
Coffee roasting?

Simon:
Yeah. So we use All Press Espresso in our cafe here, which we'll probably talk a little bit about later actually, about what coffee we use. But we came across this really beautiful apartment on the internet and it was a little bit far away from where we wanted to live, but it looked really beautiful. So we came to check it out anyway and we came and fell in love with the place immediately. The apartment is absolutely beautiful and it was a little bit out of our price range, but the real estate guy said to us, "You know the landlord is sort of thinking of having someone live here and have a cafe in the same space. He wants someone to live and own a business in the same building." And he swayed our mind, even though the price was a little bit out of our range, quite a bit out of our range.

Simon:
But yeah, so it's actually the landlord's idea. He had the idea of running a cafe here and having someone live upstairs, which is what we do now. So when he built the place and design the place and did everything, he had that always in mind. So we have two sinks in the kitchen, which has required by law to have as a cafe in Japan. We have the separate toilet downstairs for the customers. He planned all of the little details. So setting up a cafe for us was really easy, basically everything was already done. We just needed to apply for the license and get it all checked out, but everything was really smooth. It was amazing, so lucky.

Kaldi:
Yeah. I think Tokyo is so amazing. And also about the zoning, they're really flexible on the zoning code compared to at least Western cities.

Simon:
Yeah, absolutely when the inspectors came in to check the place, they literally had like a five tick box checklist and it was really simple stuff. Like do you have two sinks? Yes. Check. Do you have an air con unit? Yes. Check. Do you have a thermometer in the fridge? Yes. Check. But I was saying to her in England, they'd be touching the top of the top of the fridge, checking their finger for dust. It would be really meticulous and it was really simple.

It's been great. We've had a really nice reception from the local community. People are really excited because of the little town that we're in is really small and there's nothing really going on at all. There's a really nice bakery, but apart from that there's not really much. And the local community has been really, really supportive of us, which we're really thankful for. And because we are quite far outside of the center of Tokyo, we do rely on our local community. We get a healthy amount of new customers traveling to check us out but the bulk of our customers, they live two or three minutes away and they're coming in every time we're open. It's been a really lovely time and we didn't know anybody before we moved in and now we've got such a nice healthy community of people around us. It's really wonderful.

Kaldi:
And then what's your history of All Press?

Simon:
So All Press, I was in Australia. I was working for a customer of All Press, a wholesale customer and so I knew All Press really well. I'd worked with them for two years and really close to the Melbourne branch of All Press. And then when we had to leave Australia, I got in contact with All Press in Tokyo and said, "I'm leaving Australia, I'm moving to Tokyo. Do you have any jobs?" And it was actually really perfect timing. Somebody was just leaving and I just slipped in as a cafe kind of all rounder. And I was really lucky because I couldn't speak a lick of Japanese. I couldn't understand anything.

Simon:
But they hired me anyway because of my background with All Press and I worked there for two years total. One year was full time and then I started talking to the general manager, "I'm thinking about opening my own cafe." And she was like, "Right, we'll get you some coffee. We'll get you a machine. We'll get you a grinder. We can sort everything out for you. We'll do it for you." And it was just perfect, everything sort of slotted into place nicely. All Press has really supported us a lot and we're really thankful.

Kaldi:
Awesome. Do you guys ever envisioning ... Are you going to carry other roasters or just stick with All Press? I think saw on your website you have some single origin type.

Simon:
Yeah. We do. We do. We have guests beans for all of our pour overs. We like to celebrate Australian roasters when we can. We have a really close connection to Rumble Coffee in Melbourne. Rumble is where I learned to make coffee in the first place, so they really taught me everything I knew. And we have a really nice connection to them, so we get their beans every now and then. We also have a couple of roasteries in Tokyo that we like to partner with and in Kyoto as well. My wife, Chie, is from Kyoto. So we do change up for the hand drip always. But the espresso blend is always going to be a All Pressed house blend.

Kaldi:
Simon, I'm curious to know more about your sound work. Are you a sound artist? What does that mean?

Simon:
I studied Sonic arts, which is like sound art in university back in 2007 to 2010. Sound art, I guess it's an umbrella term for doing anything at all with sound really. You can go into so many different fields, like if you want to do soundtracks of movies or if you want to do the sound effects for movies or if you want to make art installations with sound. It's sort of like an umbrella term for all of this stuff.

So mainly, I'm a composer, which I do on the side. But the stuff that I do in other countries is, I work as part of a group called Future Cities. And what we do is we take 360 degree cameras and we scan cities, so basically, it's like Google maps. We will walk through a city or a place or a building or something with this camera and it's capturing the whole space around us. And we take that footage and we put it into Unity, the video game software, and we create interactive maps of the places that we mapped.

And then I write soundtracks for this, and we make it into an installation. So basically, visitors can come into the space that we've set up. They have a controller in front of them and they can literally interactively walk around the space kind of like Google maps street view, but with music and it's dark and it's cool and it's great. It's really good fun and we've done it a few times now. The first one was in Tokyo, where we scanned the center of Tokyo, like the crazy hustle bustle of Akihabara and Shibuya. The second one was in Taiwan and then third one was New Zealand, went into New Zealand, and the fourth one was back in Tokyo. We did Tsukiji Market and it was great. The reception was amazing. People really, really loved it because Tsukiji Market is closed down and everyone sort of misses it. It was a really good one, loved it.

Kaldi:
Are you combining any of those kind of sound installations with the coffee business or are those separate kind of projects?

Simon:
Yeah. Yeah. So after the New Zealand Wellington show, we did a very small event at Deacon Street and we set up the projector here and we invited the customers to come and see the exhibition here in our cafe. And I also do a month, I did last year. I haven't done it yet this year because we've been so busy but last year I did a radio show on YouTube every month. Basically on the first Friday of every month, I do like a live performance here at Deacon Street and then broadcast that live performance to YouTube under the name Soundscapes Radio. I tried to tie it a little bit. I don't want to cross over the two too much because the customers that we get at Deacon Street, they're sort of like older Japanese folks or young parents. I don't want to sort of force my weird electronic music to them. It's as much as I can.

Kaldi:
Just on a side note, I know here in Hawaii, I feel all the old people are cooler than any young people, so you never now they might be more on board than you think, you know?

Simon:
Probably. Yeah.

Kaldi:
Is your wife also part? Is she the food or what's her artistic vent to the business?

Simon:
So Chie studied illustration in a university in Kyoto, in a really nice university, actually a really good one. So she studied illustration and cartoon design, so that's her field and she handles all of the illustrations for Deacon Street. She does all of our labels for jams and chutneys and this year I really want to push her to do that a lot more. I think we could do a lot more with that kind of stuff. People really resonate when they know that she's done the label for the jam or the chutney, people get really excited, "Oh my God. It's amazing." So I really want her to do that a bit.

Kaldi:
I think the creative direction is very good for the brand. It looks personable and hospitable and real and friendly.

Simon:
Thank you.

Kaldi:
So what's the next ... You guys want to do like a wholesale business or are you just happy with one shop or what do you imagine for the next maybe few years for you guys, for the business, for the heart?


Simon:
Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot going on, isn't there? So for the business alone, I really want to start doing more jams and chutneys. I really enjoy making jam. I don't know why but it's sort of like it reminds me really of England and grandma's kitchen. It's really nostalgic for me, so I really want to focus on that, so more jams, more chutneys.

Simon:
We started making fudge last year, like really English style fudge, like the brittle kind of, not the really like soft texture one but the kind of like hard Sandy one and Japanese people really like that. They really enjoy it. It's not something that they can get here very easily, so we're really focusing on that at the moment. And we have some fudge addicts already who come in every week and by their block of fudge, which is great. We were really inspired by our time in Morocco, especially the breakfast. The breakfast in Morocco was fantastic. Like just the whole vibe, the slow kind of orange juice, minty nice bread, jams and butter and we of want to introduce that a little bit to Deacon Street somehow. We're thinking about maybe doing events. Like maybe have a Moroccan breakfast event once a month or something like that, where we invite a few people to come and we serve them a nice breakfast early in the morning, something like that.

Simon:
But yeah, I think at the moment we're just trying to tighten everything up, become really focused on the brand. Like you say, this sort of personable, friendly brand, that's great. I'm really glad you said that. Thank you. That's exactly what we're hoping for. That's good to know.

Kaldi:
I'm just curious if you find, I know regardless of the bureaucracy and whatnot and some of the challenges you had, well the inspectors sounded easy. Do you think the vibe in Japan right now is optimistic? I mean, you need English people in England and the whole Brexit thing in. In California, I think there's a general, people want to leave the state. It's almost too expensive. So I'm curious how you see Japan right now. It seems like you guys lucked into this nice space and you're doing a business that's quite small. I used to run a larger chain, so it almost seems like the labor is so expensive in California. I'm just curious to see how it is in Japan.

Simon:
That's really interesting. That's a good question, something I haven't thought about at all. I feel like my immediate thoughts to that question are positive vibe in the area where we are. Yeah, that's a great point. Like, England and America especially, are very negative at the moment. Especially social justice is really at the forefront of everybody and it's sort of like making everybody a little bit miserable and Brexit of course, and politics. But Japan, I think apart from obviously coronavirus is at the forefront of everybody's mind at the moment and Japan is panicking as well. It's on everybody's mind. Everyone's talking about it all the time, every day, like every single moment. But generally apart from that, I do really feel like the Japanese are very positive and I feel like the economy is doing well. We're a tiny little business in a tiny little town and we're still having customers come visit us multiple times a day. Yeah, it's hard to put into words really. That's a really thoughtful question. I might have to think about that a bit more and get back to you.

Kaldi:
No, just because here in the States, I think it would be hard to run a profitable business in a major city of that size.

Simon:
Yeah.

Kaldi:
Maybe the density is not here. See if you opened a shop like that in Brooklyn or in New York, your rent for them that size store would be $10,000 a month and then it just wouldn't work out.

Simon:
Yeah. Well that's true. Yeah.

Kaldi:
I don't know how it is in England, but in Japan it seems like there's so many shops that are a hundred square feet or whatever and they somehow sustain one or two people.

Simon:
Make it.

Kaldi:
Yeah. They're not getting extremely wealthy and opening 10 shops or anything, but they're sustaining a small corner of reputable business, you know?

Simon:
Yeah, that's right. I think in Japan there is a big opportunity for that and especially with us, we are living in the same building, so we only pay one lot of rent, which really helps. Our machine rental and our grinder is free. The coffee is expensive. I think probably more expensive than America prices, but because we only pay the one lot of rent and because we don't have any staff and we have a limited menu that we make sure we're always keeping on top of stock. We're not wasting anything whatsoever. Of course we're not making mega bucks at all, but we are able to survive moderately well. I think it's going well. Yeah.

Kaldi:
Well, Simon, I know you're busy. Is there anything else you'd like to add about Deacon Street or about the jams which are really interesting.

Simon:
Thank you. Yeah, we just did mikan jam, which are like Japanese tangerines.
Japanese tangerines, mikan and star anise. It was really nice, turned out well.
I really admire Japanese determination and just everything. The Japanese culture is great. They're so focused on what they do. Japanese people are very good at choosing one thing that they're really passionate about and just putting all of their energy into that one thing and it's wonderful. It's really lovely to see and we have a lot of friends who are doing it, friends in the coffee industry or we have a graphic designer friend who is opening his own smoothie shop next month. I love the Japanese determination and they get really passionate about stuff. It's fantastic.
I hope we’re doing the same with our jam, products and coffee.

Kaldi:
Awesome. I’m looking forward to trying it!
Your story is so optimistic and that's why we wanted to interview you because it's a nice story just to hear. Its awesome that you guys are able to get local support, set up in a reasonable way and experiment in an honest and authentic way without getting to stressed out. Trying little small experiments and running an art thing. Its awesome. We can’t wait to visit.

Thanks!

https://www.deakinstcoffeestand.com/