A coffee king in Cork

A NEW LIFE:John Gowan gave up fishing in the deadly waters of Alaska for a more settled life in the coffee business

PERHAPS IT was inevitable, growing up in the village of Castletownbere in west Cork, that John Gowan would turn to the sea to make his living.

Castletownbere is often described as a small drinking village with a huge fishing problem. Gowan recalls spending every summer as a youngster fishing for lobster or crayfish on the family trawler.

"Fishing was what we had to do growing up," Gowan says.

After finishing secondary school, he went to Kilkenny to study horticulture. Half-way through the course, a sense of wanderlust took him, and he decided to try the US for a summer. "I had too much get up and go in me to stay in college," he says, "so I went to the States for just one summer. I had lots of different jobs, such as work as a lifeguard and washing dishes and all sorts. This was the 1980s and when I returned home, I called a buddy of mine who had boats, and again I returned to fishing out of Castletownbere."

Gowan planned to return to the US, buy a car and see some sights. There was a strong network of west Cork emigrants who could be relied upon for a bed or some work if need be.

Also, west Cork became home to many visiting American families for the summer months, so he had several American addresses he could call on, one of which was the family of a prominent US undersecretary who lived in Maryland.

"I remember we got to the house and none of us wanted to knock on the door. We stayed there for a while and then headed to Florida and toured the bottom part of the US, staying at one point with director Stephen Soderbergh."

Inevitably, money began to run out and Gowan found himself in Seattle, contemplating a return home. He walked around the docks area, and met some Norwegian fishermen.

The chance meeting would result in a dangerous yet highly lucrative career move. "They asked if I was looking for work. I said no, not really. Then they said, how about $80,000 a year for four or five months' work. That got my interest."

Gowan began by working on the docks for five bucks an hour, mending nets or painting trawlers. Once he was found to be reliable, the opportunity arose to travel to Alaska to fish. "The boat was 110ft, and a pretty dodgy rig. My father would have freaked if he had seen it. So we headed for Alaska. This was before the Discovery Channel began making programmes about the dangers of fishing off the coast there.

"On that first trip, we were on the boat six months and there was no sign of payment. I called the owner and complained about the captain. The owner fired the captain and the off-shoot was at 21 years of age I became captain of the boat."

After that first season, Gowan went back to Alaska with a bigger boat, which enabled him to catch up to 15,000 tonnes of fish a year, mostly crab and pollock. "The work was deadly dangerous. I knew a few fellas that got killed. One time we had to pull the body of a friend of ours from the water. If something broke with the boat, you were in serious trouble.

"Mostly, we never left the boat for six months at a time. Yet the money was very good, probably a few hundred grand a year. I did it for nine years and the effect on your personal life was enormous. I never really had a steady girlfriend."

Gowan returned to west Cork annually during those years and noticed the fishing industry in Ireland was in steady decline.

"Fishing at home was dead in those years, but not everyone could do the work I was doing. After nine years I was getting tired of it, and the money involved meant I had some savings amassed. So I began to think about a change - your body can only take so much."

During his years at sea, Gowawn developed an interest in good quality coffee, often bartered from the crew of Japanese or European trawlers. A strong cup of coffee could help the crew through the strongest of seas, and he became something of a connoisseur.

Returning his vessel to Seattle every year for repairs, he made friends with a group of coffee roasters who had premises near the docks area. "These guys were one of the original coffee roasting companies that Starbucks bought in downtown Seattle. Once that takeover took place, they started on their own, keeping it traditional and small scale. So they had a small coffee shop as well as roasting their own coffee beans."

Gowan decided not to return to Alaska and instead to prioritise a change in career. The small coffee firm was beginning to take off and eventually became a large wholesale operation, moving into several states.

"I used to play golf with the owner, and I expressed an interest in the business. He told me to come in and learn the ropes and see what I thought of it, so long as I didn't turn around and open a café next door to him.

"So I worked with him, selecting the beans, flying to Germany and around the world setting up coffee places. I also worked in the shop, which was busy from six in the morning till eleven at night and enrolled for a course with the company that made coffee machines."

The work, combined with stability in his personal life, appealed to Gowan, and as time went on, he had little desire to return to sea. "I missed the money, but it wasn't the major factor for me. I wanted something with longevity, and to have a sustainable year-round business. If it hadn't worked out, I always knew I could return to the fishing at any point. But the longer away from it I had, the more I realised I wanted to stay away from it."

It came time to return home to Ireland, and Gowan began to think about setting up shop in Cork. He rented a commercial premises that became the base for his roasting enterprise. The wholesale business was new to Ireland, and would take time to develop, so in the meantime he figured he needed to put a public face to the company.

"I was looking to open a café-type premises. I found an outlet on Cork's Bridge Street, and opened last October. Again, it was a little slow taking off, but I always figured it was something that would take a while to build."

Six months in and business is strong. The café has proved popular and developed a reputation for fine coffee, while the wholesale side of the operation is beginning to expand. Gowan says he has no regrets about leaving sea life and is delighted with the career change.

"You wouldn't even get me on a sailing boat now. I don't pine for the call of the sea. I have a wife and three kids now and all my buddies are back in Ireland. There's also less chance of getting killed in the café."