The who, what and why of Barker St

Hi my name is Costa and I am the co-founder of Barker St, along with my wife Effie we are looking to change how Australians buy coffee.

Costa Arvanitopoulos

Costa was working in the Real Estate industry when he started falling in love with coffee. After a couple of years of his passion starting to take over his day to day life he decided to just ship and leave Real Estate and purse a career in the specialty coffee industry. Costa has been working in the specialty coffee industry since 2010 and in that time he has owned his own award winning cafe and work for some of Sydneys most respected coffee roasters.

Effie Arvanitopoulos

When your married to someone like Costa and he makes you tag along to all his coffee visits you start to become just as much obsessed says Effie.  Unlike Costa Effie still works within the Real Estate industry and as Costa says is the number cruncher behind Barker St.

Where did the idea for Barker St come from?

Costa was annoyed at how difficult it was to purchase coffee online. With so many amazing roasters in Australia all offering great coffees comparing them all had to be easier than to have 10 tabs open looking at every roasters shop page. After a handful with this process Costa decided to solve the issue. One month after that day he started on launching what you see today…..Barker St.

Where did the name Barker St come from?

After Costa sold his shop he took a short break and starting looking into sites he could build a roastery/cafe. He found a great site on Barker St in Sydney’s Randwick which he fell in love with. As Costa mentions “It had a wonderful indoor/outdoor feel and had everything I needed to set up a small roaster and provide a great cafe experience.” Regarding the name, he says “I was going to name it Barker St because i thought would be an extremely easy name to remember and all the locals would know where to go when talking about it”.

Our roaster

Barker St only partner with coffee roasters who share the same ethics as the founders Costa and Effie. Barker St only partners with roasters whos coffee is ethically and sustainablly sourced and are paying a fair price to the farmer at origin.