Coffee company Veneziano Coffee Roasters makes $60m in a year

A Melbourne man who didn’t even like coffee is now raking in millions a year from the beverage after making a $200,000 punt.

An Australian man who wasn’t even a particularly huge fan of coffee is now raking in millions a year from the popular beverage.

Craig Dickson, who co-founded specialty coffee roasting company Veneziano Coffee Roasters alongside friend and business partner Rocky Veneziano, acknowledged that it is a little ironic.

“I was actually a tea drinker until I got a job in a coffee company. Ten years later I became a certified world barista judge,” he told news.com.au.

“My coffee eduction went from zero to knowing way too much, I can bore people senseless.”

The Melbourne man, who is in his early 50s, now runs a coffee empire that spans across more than 1000 cafes.

Veneziano Coffee’s current production volumes mean they are roasting enough beans to make the equivalent of 340 million lattes every year.

To date, since the company launched in 2002, a whopping 40 million tonnes has been roasted.

Every week, the company roasts another 80 tonnes of green coffee beans.

Their business generated an eye-watering $60 million in turnover in the last year.

Craig Dickson and his business partner Rocky Veneziano, who founded the company.

The irony doesn’t end there however.

Although Mr Dickson said his wife is an “absolute coffee snob” and enjoys his artisan brand, his daughters are the complete opposite.

“My kids aren’t quite into it yet, my daughters are preferring the hot chocolate,” he said with a laugh.

The dad-of-two explained how he had been in the hospitality industry for years when he and Mr Veneziano decided to strike out on their own.

They started the now multimillion dollar company by buying a roaster and renting out a warehouse.

The whole endeavour cost them about $200,000 which came from some of Mr Dickson’s equity and some external investors.

The business had a grand total of three staff members.

At first, the business only produced 300 kilograms of coffee every week, which was distributed to several “high end” cafes across Melbourne.

However, Veneziano Coffee Roasters soon expanded rapidly.

Veneziano Coffee Roasters started in 2002.

Now the business makes millions of tonnes of coffee a year and has expanded to other Australian state capitals and even to overseas.

They service and even operate cafes across Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide.

There are 120 staff in Australia and a further 20 employees in New Zealand after buying up an investment there.

“We grew quickly, growing really fast means you've got to carry more stock, you’ve got to carry more debt,” Mr Dickson said.

“There were certainly times where it was very difficult to pay the bills.”

Mr Dickson admitted the coffee company hit a bit of a roadblock during the Covid-19 lockdowns, especially with Melbourne being hit hardest, which is where they have their largest presence.

Luckily, the company started looking into e-commerce options and these “exploded” during the pandemic.

“With the change of WFH, we probably tripled our online sales, those sales have held, with a lot more people working from home, there’s been a lot of purchasing home espresso,” he explained.

Veneziano Coffee Roasters source their coffee beans from all over the world including Panama, India, Ethiopia and Peru, among others.

Before travel was disrupted from the Covid-19 pandemic, the business owners used to visit the crops once a year to ensure quality.

It’s possible that you’ve drunk one of Mr Dickson’s products without even realising.

Many artisan coffee cafes “particularly in Melbourne, like to roll a bit of stealth,” Mr Dickson said. “You often don’t know whose coffee you’re drinking.”

Originally published as Coffee company Veneziano Coffee Roasters makes $60m in a year