THE vogue for coffee shops in the capital continues apace with the opening of a new espresso bar in Temple Bar. Called The Cafe Inn it is owned by 24 year old ex financial trader Fintan McKiernan, who after only one week in business is already planning a chain of coffee bars modelled on his small Parliament Street premises. "I originally wanted to call the place `Caf-feine'," says the young owner "but I thought people might be put off by its hyper connotations."
The Cafe Inn name was eventually picked as a sort of hommage to the legendary student hang out - the Coffee Inn on South Anne Street, which closed only recently.
Fintan's first entrepreneurial venture was as a student when he bought a chip van - "It was around the time when Roddy Doyle's book The Van came out and it seemed a great idea. But I started work in February and it was freezing and the novelty quickly wore off."
After that he headed for Japan and ended up trading futures on the Tokyo stock exchange for two years. When the coffee bug hit, Fintan headed for Seattle, where the coffee craze first started, to do a bit of market research.
His Cafe Inn stocks 34 different types of tea - including the most expensive cuppa in Dublin Vintage Darjeeling at £1.90 a brew. There are 15 different types of coffee. People here know a lot more about coffee these days - it's nothing unusual now - for people to ask for a bit of Brazilian in with their Columbian," he says.