Page 12 - Food&Drink Magazine Aug-Sep 2021

✷ RISING STAR
“If we can get that messaging through, if we can support that endeavour, whether financially or otherwise, it is really positive. We don’t want Indigenous affairs on the periphery anymore, we want it in centre of every Australian’s culture. Dhuwa is a great vehicle for building greater awareness and understanding,” Patisteas says.
THE HURDLES TO JUMP
“You grow up hearing ‘no’
a lot,” Andrews says when explaining the systemic lack of trust banks and industry have in Indigenous people and businesses as legitimate enterprises.
The upshot of that is having to work twice as hard as a non-Indigenous person and even then, it is not enough.
“I’m the first person in my family to stay in school beyond Year 9, I’m the first to get a degree, to get my master’s and to do an MBA. But banks still don’t trust our legitimacy.
“So, we had to find the right partner, one that would be with us for the long journey, would understand racism and the reality that every day I come to work I’m coming with the trauma of my people. And be able to absorb that and get on to produce not just any coffee, but coffee that is twenty per cent better than anyone else’s,” Andrews says.
“Pete has lived firsthand the times I have said ‘I can’t do that’, or when I have left the office half an hour after arriving because
“ Often a business relationship falls over or an employment situation fails in the Indigenous space because people don’t understand trauma and trauma informed practice. It’s a critical part of our pedagogy.”
on that day I just feel safer working from home.
“It has nothing to do
with anyone around me
and everything to do with trauma. It is learning to not judge the individual for the action, but the action itself. When you understand that
is a trauma response, the education process is working.
“Often a business relationship falls over or an employment situation fails in the Indigenous space because people don’t understand trauma and
trauma informed practice. It is a critical part of our pedagogy moving forward.
“My major passion is to end Indigenous disadvantage and that trauma cycle. Dhuwa Coffee is a tool to do that.”
ONTO THE SHELF
In 2020, Andrews’ Supply Aus business established a relationship with Woolworths to supply the retailer with hand sanitiser during COVID-19.
LEFT: Dhuwa has launched with three different blends, available in beans or ground.
ABOVE: The oldest coffee house and the oldest culture: Peter Patisteas, Chris Togias, Shawn Andrews and Adam Williams.
“At that stage we were a small Indigenous business with 120,000 tonnes of sanitiser. We only had $1000 in our bank account and it was a contract worth more than $7 million.
“You either lean in or lean out,” he says.
But even Andrews was surprised with the outcome of their first meeting for Dhuwa.
“We were all heading in, and I was reassuring Chris and Pete that we’d get one or two SKUs into stores. We walked out with an agreement to have 18 SKUs ready in 14 weeks,” he laughs.
It was an enormous effort but one they achieved through the expertise of all involved, Andrews says.
Critically, throughout the entire process every decision came back to Andrews to approve. “Pete and Chris’s involvement was never tokenistic. This is an indigenous coffee brand that has to be led by Indigenous people,” he says.
Patisteas says his Greek heritage meant he grew up in a household where everything was discussed at the table.
“It is very much how we feel working with Shawn and Adam, we meet around the table but at the end of the day, it is an Indigenous company and the decision making has to be theirs,” he says.
“In the space of fourteen weeks, a completely Indigenous
led company, took a completely new premium product to market into one of the most competitive markets in the country. Five per cent of our profits go straight to our charity partner Dreaming Futures which supports Indigenous kids in out of home care.
“We are a serious, successful Indigenous business and seen as such but there’s more to do,” Andrews says.
“My aim is not for Dhuwa to just be the premium coffee on the shelf, my aim is for Dhuwa to be Australians’ choice of coffee and an exporting champion for this country.”
Dhuwa is born from a Mununjali man determined the sophisticated and strong Indigenous Australian culture is embraced while the disadvantage and intergenerational trauma experienced by First Nations people ends, and delivered by a partnership built on trust, respect and a lot of hard work.
Andrews says: “We’re all destined to become ancestors. How we start supporting more Indigenous people and businesses comes from understanding we have to be more involved in Indigenous culture. We all have to respect, care, understand and love it for real and lasting change.”
Dhuwa is calling all of us to riseandshine. ✷
12 | Food&Drink business | August/September 2021 | www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au