Company Performance Metrics
- Cemal Polat: Fouder
Drury 188-189 is a story of two best friends from east London who decided to leave their 9-5 jobs and dive deep into the world of independent cafes in London; Ali left his Security manager role and Cemal his job in academia lecturing business and economics. Both found themself creating something special with the space they took on, which used to be
a unit that failed twice before. The owners wanted to create a space which defied the fast-paced and monotone cafes in Covent Garden/Holborn, we wanted our space to be different, and we wanted our amazing customer to feel a sense of disconnection from the real world and breathe, hence why we built our cafe without wifi and offering books instead.
We wanted to stand out from the crowd and refused to be another cafe, and we wanted to build a sense of community in a pretty dull location. Since we have opened, we have been given 100s of napkins with drawings and mentions of gratitude which can be seen all over our cafe; these napkins and love notes is now our daily motivation on those mornings, which we cannot understand. Why life is the way, it is…
Oh yeah, about the cafe, Drury 188-189 opened its doors on 9th December 2016. We aimed to do 3 things: smile, serve good coffee, serve good food with good/organic ingredients, and be as sustainable as possible. Starting with this mission and mindset, we quickly but surely created great bonds with locals, tourists and passersby; we always aim to show the same care from our 1st customer to the very last one.
Our amazing supportive customers have also helped us through our journey of the years by visiting us and leaving amazing reviews on Google, Facebook, and TripAdvisor to spread the news and the food/service they received on the day.
Our TripAdvisor account was opened by a customer of ours who sadly moved out of the area. In a short period of time, we achieved the No1 position under the Cafes in London category, which was just incredible to see the love and support shown by our customers. This was by far one of the proudest and happiest moments of Ali and Cemals life, and for this reason, please all accept a massive hug to any one of our customers who has supported us in our journey. We currently have 3 cafes in Covent Garden, Holborn and also our home turf of Hackney, where we lived our whole life and still live, we have a strong sense of community and when we had the opportunity to open a cafe in the area where we created amazing memories it was a no brainer for us.
During our journey, we had the chance to meet, work and serve some amazing people with hearts of gold… some of them have become excellent friends, and some of them have become closer than family, and we would like to take this opportunity to thank every single one of them.
Please say hello if you see us.
Cemal and Ali.
