A Glaswegian airline pilot with a passion for coffee has built his very own coffee roastery - in his back garden.
Earlier this year, we brought you the story of Gordon Melling, who while on furlough during lockdown launched his own coffee company - Naked Roaster Coffee.
Over the last few months, 42-year-old Gordon, who has worked for both commercial airlines and the air ambulance, has been operating his fledgling company from his home, with kilos of coffee arriving at his south side address as he responds to increasing demand from his customers.
But with the business growing in popularity, Gordon's wife was understandably becoming tired of sackfuls of coffee clogging up every spare bit of room in the house.
As such, he had to come up with an alternative and has recently finished building a dedicated roastery in the back garden.
Giving Glasgow Live a tour of the unique coffee location, which Gordon built entirely on his own, he told Glasgow Live how the project came about: "I was operating in various areas of the house from the dining room to the office to the kitchen and my other half and my other half was definitely needing me to get somewhere else to do the coffee roasting - the coffee roastery seemed like the perfect way to do it on a small scale!"
Although Naked Roaster appears to be the only coffee company roasting beans in a back garden in Glasgow, Gordon says one of his friends also runs a coffee business from their own home.
He added: "Strangely enough I have a friend who has another coffee company who doesn’t quite roast the beans in his back garden but he does it from his house. He’s called RamBean, based in Cardonald and his coffee is excellent as well."
And will there be a need to further expand in the garden or elsewhere in the near future? Since the coffee passionate pilot launched the business during lockdown, Naked Roaster has really taken off.
Gordon said: "It's definitely grown quite a lot since then. It’s mainly our home customers who order on subscription - that’s risen quite a lot since the start. It’s grown quite a lot and it’s at a nice level."
For a video tour of the roastery, press play in the video player above.
To find out more about Gordon and Naked Roaster Coffee, you can read our article from February this year here.
To order yourself some beans, you can visit the website here.
Meanwhile, you can see Gordon roasting the beans on his Instagram page here.
