Opening a cafe which operates from a shipping container has been a lifelong dream for Ed Crick.
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“I have always been pretty obsessed with shipping containers,” Mr Crick said.
“I have built a house out of a shipping container, and lived in that for a fair while, and it's just been something that I have always been pretty interested in.”
He is the son of businessman Greg Crick and spent some time at the car dealership before starting his own business.
A few years ago Mr Crick was living in Brunei but returned to Tasmania after being struck with a case of dengue fever.
“I came home and got into the family business and then dad got sick and I ran that for three years,” Mr Crick said.
“I then did commercial real estate for a year but it wasn't really for me, so I decide to do this.”
It took just six weeks from the moment he made the decision to have the container coffee shop up and running.
Part of the appeal of using a shipping container is that it can be located at unique sites. The first shop is at the abandoned service station on the West Tamar Highway at Riverside.
“It hasn’t been used for 18 years and is run down and derelict but you don’t have to do a lot of work get it up and running,” Mr Crick said.
“If we were to turn the actual building into a cafe we would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars doing it, where we can build a shipping container, put it there, use the space and then if in five years time our lease runs out we haven't lost anything, we can pick up the container and go.”
After six-months of trading Mr Crick is now looking to expand and has lodged a development application with the City of Launceston to have a container at 108 to 112 High Street.
“The container is all finished and ready to go, it’s the same branding but a different colour and with some different graphics on it, we are just waiting on council approval,” he said.
Mr Crick said parking, traffic flow and opening hours were the issues being discussed with the council.
“We will get the second one going and see what happen but I would hope to have four by the end of the next year,” he said.
“I don’t want to rush into whacking them in and it not being in the right spot. We have about 14,000 traffic movements along [West Tamar Road] a day which has obviously served us pretty well and High Street is exactly the same.
“We would also be pretty interested in Campbell Town.”
As for the name, Mr Crick said while it was a little controversial it was here to stay.
“It is in reference to a coffee bean, only the people who have dirty minds get offended by it,” he said.