In 2005, Java Lounge was born.
We opened our first store in Moseley Village, in one of the coolest areas in Birmingham. Voted as one of the best places to live by the Sunday Times, Moseley is a trendy and cultural hotspot, renowned for its bohemian spirit and cosmopolitan character. It was the ideal place for us to begin our journey.
In 2015, we opened our second store in a Grade I listed building on 122-124 Colmore Row, in the heart of the city’s commercial district. Built in 1900, and designed in an Arts and Crafts style, its described as “one of the most original buildings of its date in England”, and “one of the most important monuments of the Arts and Crafts FreeStyle in the country”. Combining the creative style of this period with contemporary design, we demonstrated our ethos of designing beautiful coffeehouses.
In 2017, we took the design of coffeehouses to a whole new level when we designed and built a coffeehouse in Blythe Valley Business Park. Bringing together contemporary architectural styles, we created a coffeehouse experience to enrich the human spirit of creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. As a result of this project, we were approached to open a coffeehouse in Middlemarch Business Park, which also opened in 2017.
Come 2019, it was becoming increasingly clear to us, that the needs of people were changing, but coffeehouses and coffee culture hadn’t evolved with the needs of our time.
We’re living in a time of unprecedented change. The convergence of disruptive technologies and a changing socio-economic-cultural landscape, the challenges of global climate change, economic and social inequalities, all contribute to how we live and our states of mind.
With the rate of change so fast, making sense of and living fulfilled lives is even more challenging; we’re looking for more meaning in our lives; searching for ways to make sense of it all, searching for new experiences, meaningful experiences that enrich our lives and connect us with the fun and vitality of life.
So we set about rethinking what it means to be a coffeehouse in a time of exponential change. We asked ourselves the question, how could we create a coffeehouse experience and culture to meet the needs of 21st-century living?
So we embarked on a journey to discover what it means to be a coffeehouse in the 21st-century.
Through our journey, we saw the need to design coffeehouses where we can experience: mindfulness, wellness, self-discovery, sensual pleasure, creative productivity and meaningful social experiences – to make coffeehouses places of culture through events organised around music, literature and people who are influencing the shape of our world.
We saw the need to rethink coffee product innovation; to create new blends that both stimulate and delight the senses; harnessing our knowledge to discover new secrets of the ‘wine of Araby’.
We saw how the secrets of the coffee bean could be unleashed to create a whole new lifestyle experience from coffee table magazines to fashion – a true lifestyle brand derived from the ‘wine of Araby’!
At its heart is an ethos of sustainable living, living life with meaning, and to realise the fun and vitality of life.
Out of this, we created Java Roastery, a coffeehouse for 21st-century living.
It’s an immersive coffeehouse experience, designed to connect with the fun in life; inspired by the human need to discover the world and ourselves.
It’s about living in the moment, realising and living a fulfilled life.
It’s about finding and igniting your passions. It’s a lifestyle.
We call this coffee 3.0.