RAND Coffee Cab: Leeds roaster turns childhood dream into reality with city's first London taxi cafe

Transcript

00:00Hi, my name is Aydın Dogan. People know me as Mr. Ran. I'm originally from

00:06Istanbul. I've been living in Leeds nearly 30 years now and I'm the owner of

00:13Ran Coffee Roast. Can you just tell us how you got into the business? Yes, I've been in the coffee

00:22business last 15 years. We established our first branch opposite Leeds University. I came

00:29where I come from, everybody drinks coffee. I was born into coffee culture in Istanbul.

00:38My dream was always opening my own coffee roasting company, which is luckily I managed

00:43to open 15 years ago. Is this the only branch that you've got or have you got any other branches

00:49around? Our first branch opened 2010 opposite Leeds University and I was

00:59second branch open in round day 2019, just before the COVID. At the moment we have a

01:08two branch, but we are soon to open a new branch in Leeds City Centre. Yeah, so we got the London

01:17taxi, London cat, other name. So we turned that into Ram Coffee Cup. So basically we're going

01:26to be driving around and stopping in different places in Leeds and we're going to be offering

01:33our Newfoundland to everybody with our round coffee cup. You must be really excited to be

01:38doing that. Yeah, I mean I love what I do. I love coffee and having this coffee cup, instead

01:44of people coming to us, we're going to be going to them. I think that is brilliant and it's just a pleasure.

01:51Those that have seen the cab already, what sort of reaction have you had?

01:56Yeah, I mean I've been driving the cab around Leeds and people are just like in the traffic,

02:02they're just peeping me, their horns, people are waving at me, kids are so happy when they see me.

02:07Even some people think it's actually a real taxi, they're trying to stop me, but I tell them it's just a coffee cup.

02:14Oh my God.

02:33Yeah.