SL.OW comes from Cambridge, a small town in New Zealand known as the Home of Champions due to the concentration of professional athletes and Olympians who train there. And it is precisely from sports that the bakery's story begins.
The founder Sam Dakin spent a large part of his life on two wheels as a professional track cyclist and represented New Zealand at two Olympics. Years in which everything is measured in hundredths of a second gradually led him to exactly the opposite idea – that outside of sports, he needed to slow down.
Coffee became his way of doing it. Not so much because of the caffeine, but because of the ritual itself – to make coffee, sit down, and for a little while not chase the next task.
In 2022, SL.OW Coffee Roasters was born from this idea. The beginning was quite literally small batch – Sam and Alex King roasted 1 kg on a Bullet in the garage of their apartment in Cambridge. Since then, SL.OW has grown quite a bit, and Jonte Wright has joined Sam, who also comes from professional sports after seven years in elite rowing in New Zealand.
Today, SL.OW works with a rotating selection of single origin coffees and small batches, focusing on clarity and a clearly recognizable taste in the cup. But coffee is only part of the reason we follow them. Music, design, fashion, and quite impressive packaging are also part of SL.OW – their idea is to build a brand that happens to make very good coffee too, rather than just another specialty coffee roastery.
The name probably makes more sense now.
The world moves fast. SL.OW down.
