From bare walls to first pour: how we built VAXX

Most coffee shops arrive finished. Ours didn't.

When we picked up the keys to the corner of Battersea Park Road, we got bare walls, a floor that had seen things, and a ceiling full of cables. What we didn't get was a big fit-out budget. So we did what we've always done in business: rolled up our sleeves and started.

The scaffolding went up in the summer heat. The facade went from tired green to bright white in a weekend. The steel frame in the doorway got its coat of orange — the same orange that's now on the sign, the cups and, for a while, most of our clothes.

The sign itself was the moment it became real. Laying the letters out on the workbench, numbering them, then watching SPECIALITY COFFEE • BRUNCH • BAKERY go up one piece at a time. A neighbour walking a dog stopped to watch. That's when it felt like a café rather than a project.

We're not telling you this because we're proud of our painting (we're average painters). We're telling you because this is what VAXX is: a place built by people who know the long days, the changed plans and the value of one very good cup in the middle of it all.

Come see it in person. The paint's dry now — mostly.