Get your coffee from container to cup

After more than a decade of freelance life working as a television producer, Gordon Hickey felt ready to settle down into a more permanent job by creating one for himself. It’s interesting that Hickey’s idea of permanency involves what many would consider the temporary space of a reclaimed shipping container.

One of Hickey's TV credits includes the RTÉ show You Should Really See A Doctor, where Dr Pixie McKenna and Dr Phil Kieran travelled around the country setting up a temporary health clinic out of a shipping container, which first gave Hickey an inkling of the potential within the walls of a container.

Over the past couple of months, Hickey has documented the ups and downs of bringing Container Coffee Dublin to life through the shop's Instagram account. From applying for planning with Dublin City Council, to heading down to the Dublin Docklands to pick out the two 20ft containers that would become his coffee shop, to the containers arriving at their Dublin 8 home in late March, to excited video updates fresh from coffee tastings to updates sharing the less fun and more frustrating sides of managing an unusual project like this, Hickey has captured the story of Container Coffee in a really endearing way. Having followed the story online for a couple of weeks, I've already bought into the business and I want to see it succeed.

Hickey, who’s from Dublin, thought the area of Thomas Street in Dublin 8 was underserviced in terms of coffee shops, given the huge footfall with tourists between Guinness Storehouse, IMMA and Kilmainham Gaol. He got in touch with Joanne Kearney at the Digital Hub to explore the idea of parking a shipping container on the edge of their grounds. “They have been so supportive and helpful from the very beginning,” Hickey says of his landlords.

I swing by on its second day of being open and all signs are pointing to success for this bright blue beacon of ingenuity. A sign outside the shop reads “Last coffee stop until Kilmainham and IMMA”. The front door looks on to Thomas Street across the road from the Guinness Storehouse, and the back door faces on to a large yard with picnic benches. Hickey enlisted the help of his friend, award-winning designer Martin McCormick, to make the best use of the container’s interior and it has paid off.

Docklands roastery

“I’m still finding my feet in terms of systems and food suppliers,” says Hickey, “but my main focus at the moment is the coffee.” It’s appropriate that his coffee suppliers are Cloudpicker Coffee, whose roastery is down in the Docklands, the same neighbourhood the shipping containers are from. My flat white (€2.90) is served in a small 6oz cup, a petite measurement that ensures a pleasant ratio of coffee to milk.

Hickey and his team experimented in making their own sandwiches for the opening weekend, though this week he’s trying out Cloudpicker’s new catering service which will include a roast-beef-and-horseradish sandwich and a pork loin with pickled red cabbage sandwich. They’ve already got a good selection of cakes, including Camerino Bakery’s outstanding peanut-butter brownies, and elsewhere on the drinks menu are hot chocolates and teas.

Apart from spaces such as Thru The Green coffee shop in the Dublin suburb of Dundrum, and Eatyard food market next door to the Bernard Shaw in Dublin 2, the potential of shipping containers as retail space hasn’t been harnessed in quite the same way here in Ireland as it has internationally in places like London’s Boxpark and New Zealand Re:START. It’s great to see another pop up in the city.

For more see containercoffee.ie