OUR STORY
Our challenge at Fuel Espresso has always been to get our customers, who mostly appreciate fine wine, to understand the virtues of fine espresso. Our answer? Persistence. 29 years of it.
Our late founder Sanjay Ponnapa came from five generations of coffee growers in India. His parents were both descendants of plantation owners, being doctors they were recruited by the New Zealand health sector. In the community they had migrated from, coffee was at the heart of every family’s livelihood.
When Sanjay was a child in the 1970’s, his uncle would send his mother coffee from his farm in India. His mother would roast the coffee in their kitchen oven and his father would brew it for the family. It was their soul connection.
Post university, he had spent some time working with the creative principals of a fashion house and later cocktail bartending in fine dining restaurants and jazz clubs in New York. Those experiences taught him to value detail.
In 1996 Sanjay’s heart followed his blood line back into coffee. He opened the first Fuel Espresso, an espresso cart in the business district of Wellington, New Zealand. The desire was to build a beautiful espresso business based solely on quality and attention to detail.
“Sanjay” soon became “us” and together we honed our craft. A year later we went to Trieste, Italy, where we worked to develop one of our signature blends. Arriving back in New Zealand we then embarked on a long project to recreate that same flavour experience, for every customer, every day.
As we opened more espresso bars, our pursuit of perfection gained momentum. We have further tested that experience when we opened in Hong Kong in 2008 and then in Shanghai in 2012. Every day we continue to deliver the best espresso possible, warm service and an ambience that is ideal fuel for the meetings of many minds.
Though we have many plans for the future, we know fine coffee takes time. Like the pursuit of great vintage champagne, it became a beautiful obsession to continually refine flavour, an obsession we knew, would come at great expense.
We are so proud that as a team we have been able to lift to the next level the flavour that we first developed more than 29 years ago. We hope you can taste it too. We like to think you’re tasting the champagne of espresso.
Please savour.