If you haven’t heard of Topdose Coffee Roasters yet, trust us—you will. Neo Mkhethoni and Japhet Matimbe are the brains behind this rising star in South Africa’s coffee world, and they’re not here to play it safe. Winners of the Coffee Magazine Emerging Entrepreneur Award in 2024, and a very strong performance in last year's A Shot in the Dark competition, the Topdose crew are bold roasters, with fresh ideas, and a whole lot of passion.
We caught up with the duo to chat about their journey, their hustle, and their brand new venue at the Fourways Farmers Market! Grab your mug, it’s a good one.
How has 2025 been for Topdose?
Its been great thus far! We can’t complain. When we kicked off 2025 our goal was reinventing ourselves and getting our brand more out there.
Still the same team of Neo and Japhet, or are there some more team members?
We have added more team members as we have three sites now, Muldersdrift, Melville and Modderfontein and we comprise of 11 team members.
Who does what at Topdose? What are the roles? Or do you both do a little bit of everything?
We still continue to do little of everything, there’s no escaping that, but we have 2 admin, 2 chefs, and 7 Baristas!
Tell us a little bit about the new venue at Fourways Farmers Market?
We were approached by the owners in 2024, as they also cycle in The Cradle of Human kind, and it took us over 6 months to make decision to move our entire production to Fourways Farmers Market. It made sense, because of the space and limitations we had in The Cradle. It was also a difficult decision to make as we love the Cradle but because of brand awareness and space to do more, we took the offer!
Do you have a nice crew of regulars there yet, tell us a little bit about your favourite customers!
We’ve only been operational for 2 weeks there and we haven’t done any advertising as yet but will be hitting the socials soon, we have a marketing strategy planned out. Come visit us!
What is your favourite coffee at the moment and why?
Hard question to answer at the moment, with the growth of our business, we’ve not had a chance to explore, also the market has been limited, hopefully with Africa reaching harvesting season will have much more options.
Who inspires you in coffee roasting right now? And where do you look for inspiration and future roasting trends and knowledge?
We’ve always been inspired by our customers, and the continued support we’ve received from them. In terms of roasting Stumptown and Bluebottle are our inspiration, they've created recognisable and world-renowned brands with quality coffee at their core. Our ultimate goal is working directly with coffee farmers.
What is the next big step for the business?
Focusing more on retail and growing our online reach, hopefully it’ll be an opportunity to convert the Gauteng market more into specialty coffee, because it hasn’t been an easy task!
