The Tuk-Tuk That Started Coffee Circus
The Tuk-Tuk That Started Coffee Circus
This is one of our favourite stories to tell. Because this little three-wheeler is where the whole Coffee Circus journey began — the start of specialty coffee in Malta.
If this tuk-tuk could talk, it would need a whole book. It has seen more concerts, festivals, and events than we can count. It has met thousands of people, poured thousands of cups of freshly roasted specialty coffee, and helped a whole community grow around it.
Found in a London Garage
Our founder, Mindoza, first met it in London, at the home of friends who used to work festivals like we do. One day the London authorities decided three-wheelers were no longer welcome on their streets. So the tuk-tuk sat in a garage, parked and forgotten.
Mindoza was visiting those friends when he found this charming little machine sitting there. And he invited it to Malta.
It was a long trip from London to Malta — and an even longer road to the street where it would start its new life.
Mosta, 2014
That street was in Mosta, right by the church. In 2014, for the first time in Malta’s history, the tuk-tuk began telling the story of specialty coffee — and letting people taste it.
It wasn’t easy back then. Coffee around us cost about 60 cents a cup. The tuk-tuk was asking 2 euros for an espresso. People laughed. There were jokes, there were comments.
But the taste won. The quality won. Slowly, the Maltese fell in love with proper specialty coffee.
One Little Machine, a Whole Community
Within a year it had become a real star. Big events, small events, weddings, corporate functions — it was invited everywhere. And the years went by.
It did its job so well that specialty coffee took root in Malta. From that one tuk-tuk in Mosta grew Seven Beans Roasters and Coffee Circus cafés across the islands — Lisboa in Valletta, Tigne in Sliema, China in Birzebbuga, Porto in Msida, and JOY in Gozo. It also kept its wheels: the Bike, Bebbux, the Ambulance and Subaru Van still bring fresh coffee to events and streets, and you will even find Coffee Circus at the University of Malta. Each one found its own character, but every cup still carries what that little machine carried first: real coffee, roasted with care, and a community built around it.
And it did not stop in Malta. After more than ten years of roasting here, the Coffee Circus community now reaches across Europe — Piano in Vilnius, Lithuania, and DRZI PRZI in Podgorica, Montenegro — and our freshly roasted single-origin coffee ships to coffee lovers across the Globe. And more people want to open their own Coffee Circus. All of it grew from this one little machine and the people it brought together.
A New Home with the Abela Family at Tulliera
Today the tuk-tuk has found wonderful people and a wonderful place. The age shows — chasing festivals and events is not as easy as it used to be. So it is slowing down a little, stepping back from the endless event circuit, and heading off to the countryside for a calmer life.
From now on it lives at Tulliera, a family farm in Delimara run by Kenneth Abela. Kenneth and his family took a degraded piece of land in the south of Malta and turned it into a thriving farm — sea salt hand-harvested from their own Delimara pans, raw honey, goat dairy, preserves, all made the proper way. They are even bringing endangered indigenous Maltese breeds back from the edge — the Maltese goat, the Maltese black hen — animals that had almost disappeared from the island.
We love that. It is the same spirit that started Coffee Circus: care, patience, doing things honestly, and bringing something good back to Malta. The tuk-tuk could not be in better hands. It stays part of the Coffee Circus family, still pouring the same specialty coffee, just at a gentler pace, among people who treat their craft the way we treat ours.
So we hope you meet it there. When you visit the Abela family at Tulliera for their honest, rustic local products, stop for a coffee from the little machine that started it all.
Taste What That Little Machine Started
Ten years on, we still roast the same way — small batches, fair to the farmers, freshly roasted in Malta. Every bag in our shop carries what the tuk-tuk first poured on a Mosta street in 2014.
Browse our single-origin coffee selection — freshly roasted, shipped across the European Union. Or come find us in person at one of our Coffee Circus cafés across Malta and Gozo — and if you are in Vilnius or Podgorica, the community now reaches you too.