A trip to New Zealand for his brother’s wedding introduced David Donde to specialty coffee and, with no one to teach him, he developed an entirely new method of roasting coffee. According to Donde, who also founded the Barnyard Farmstall in Tokai, no one taught him how to roast coffee; so they continue to ‘break the rules’ at Truth – which gives them a competitive advantage.
In addition to the company’s on-going curiosity for coffee, Donde says that the design of the space sets the café apart from any other coffee roasters in the market. Technology is also at the heart of the success of coffee shop.
Behind Truth’s success is accounting software that has enabled rather than inhibited the coffee shop’s growth, by enabling Donde to concentrate on the coffee, rather than the accounts.
“The biggest challenge in the business is knowing what’s going on. Ring-fenced accounting packages that are owned and controlled by the accounting people and not visible to the entrepreneur were a problem for me. Cloud accounting software such as Xero, are capable of dealing with such issues through the provision of – among others – real-time access to financial data.”
Xero’s open API (Application Programming Interface) also means that the café can plug in things like stock control, and their till system, removing the need for manual data entry.
Colin Timmis, Xero Head of Accounting and MD of Real Time Accounting, the company that introduced Truth to Xero, suggests that “too often business owners are disconnected from what’s going on in their company. Truth is recognised as one of the leading coffee shops in Cape Town and as a growing business it needs to be connected to software that allows it to change and grow as it continues to expand.”