Entrepreneur David Donde is best known as the business brain behind Truth Coffee. But this Capetonian has been busy with multiple other creative projects.
Founder and co-owner David Donde created the legendary Cape Town CBD coffee shop, Truth, in its current Buitenkant St location, in 2012. His first dip into the coffee world was with Cape Town brand Origin. It took him a year to create the Truth artisanal roastery, with steampunk design incorporating black cabling, steel plating and mesh, in an 1898 Victorian warehouse.
Truth has won international coffee shop awards, yet it is quintessentially Cape Town. A hatch opens to Buitenkant’s pavement life. Bakery items fly, pretty pastries vying with sourdough loaves that take four days to make. Croissants sell so fast that there’s a sign advertising the times that they’re available. They’re flaky-soft yet crisp and magnificent. Donde admits that although a proudly local fan, his bakers use French butter because there’s nothing like it to deliver superior results.
A vintage 1940s coffee roaster called “Colussus” is surrounded by moody banquettes. Our chat is interrupted often by a mass of shaking beans falling noisily into the roaster. Truth roasts about six tonnes a month, supplying coffee clients in and beyond the city centre.
COFFEE CAPITAL
Donde says Cape Town has emerged as one of the coffee capitals of the world. Appropriately, Truth’s back door opens on to Coffee Lane.
“Two things make it this way: lots of availability of incredible coffee. And the downfall of cheap undrinkable coffee. To be a coffee capital, not only do you have to move the upper end, but the lower end too. Artisan coffee is important to Cape Town culture. We, as Truth, have rivals we’re proud of.”
I suggest that unlike many overseas coffee spots where moving on is encouraged, lingering locals are made to feel welcome.
Donde agrees. “We’ve got the big table at Truth, designed around people working remotely.” It’s about seven metres long.
“I think most mobile warriors have a sense of doing the right thing. When we were building Truth, I was working from a coffee shop in Green Point, and this woman nearby was shouting, without headphones. Happily, that kind of behaviour is the exception now.”
Where a restaurant follows a format of ordering, Donde says coffee shops by their nature, are more amorphous. “I don’t think it’s only about work, it’s about a non-intimidating space to hang out. Using a coffee shop in the way you want to use it.”
NEW VENTURES
Pastry chef Laurence Smith, ex Delaire Graff, recently joined the team to help launch new Rapt, across the road. From mid-August, he’ll also oversee new Flour Market, which is opening opposite The French School in Hope Street. Also boasting a café, it’s where baking operations will be centralised.
As with Donde’s other What? Food Group venues, the emphasis will be on “real food and consumption”, using old-style techniques and authentic ingredients. Truth also hosts PlayDate (drinks, food and board games) in the evenings.
In 2019, the Truth coffee wholesale arm was separated, and grouped with Origin and Tribe’s coffee operations. Donde still owns the Buitenkant St roastery and café. On the same premises, what used to be called Truth Coffee Academy has been rebranded the African School of Coffee (ASC), devoted to brewing excellence. Donde has no involvement in ASC. The non-profit offers barista training in Cape Town.
Donde also operates a secret speakeasy called The Art of Duplicity. “You haven’t been?” he asks. I query where I’d find it. “You won’t,” says Donde. “Give me a shout when you want to go.”
Has doing business become more challenging? “We have more tourism than when we started, and a more sophisticated tourist base. But in a post-Covid world, fewer people are doing their meetings in town,” says Donde, ever cognisant of being customer-orientated, and being in it for the long haul.
SWEET RAPTURE
We move across to Rapt. Where Truth is industrial drama and tall shadows, Rapt is a world of Willy Wonka edibles, against pastel ice cream colours, Pop Art and light. Rapt opened in April 2024 and has taken Cape Town’s sugar-loving communities by storm.
Kaylah Greenberg is the chocolatier bursting with creative energy, who drives the product creation. “Today is decorating day. It’s always on a Monday, after a crazy weekend,” she declares, showing off a decoration station (hand painting happens on another day), and a spray booth.
“With chocolate you decorate the other way around to a cake. You start with decoration on the outer shell of the mould, then create the shell by pouring the chocolate in and out. And then pipe filling inside once that’s set. We use a range of ganache, caramels, pralines and cookie butters. Once they’re crystalised, the final layer of chocolate, the cap.”
The results truly are beautiful: a box of Rapt “Bon Bombs” contains pomegranate molasses with caramel in dark chocolate; Pear Tart, a jelly and almond praline filling in milk chocolate; or peach-toned Mango Buddha. A paint-splattered white dome Brownie Bomb of Hukambi ganache, cake and milk chocolate, is super yum. There’s gold leaf Malakoff rectangles or Brown Butter Ganache. A giant milk chocolate pretzel bark reminds me of those tennis biscuit and cocoa fridge squares of school fêtes but tastes more caramel-gooey-salty-crunchy like millionaire’s shortbread.
Coming soon at Rapt is a label called “Kayla’s experience” for offering “something new”. A marshmallow bar, based on a Chocolate Log, is one recent creation.
“Yes, sugar indulgence is alive and well in the city,” Greenberg chuckles. “People understand that even though it’s perceived as expensive, you only need one or two pieces to get that fix, as opposed to Cadbury’s where you’d smash a whole slab.”
STILL TRENDING
On the subject, there’s a Rapt version of the handmade Pistachio Kataifi Bars that went viral in Dubai this year. Selling at R400 apiece, Greenberg makes 20 large moulds a day, plus 100 log-style miniatures, and “can’t make enough” bars to meet demand. The Middle Eastern pastry and pistachio butter combo is chewy-crunchy in a milk chocolate, paint-splattered shell. The legend goes that housewives send their husbands who work in town to pick up a few …
On a Saturday afternoon, Rapt customers order liquid nitrogen ice creams in homemade waffle cones. The adjacent station has chocolate slabs being decorated from a wall of sweets. Chocolate fountains create steaming Callebaut and cream hot chocolate cups, rims edged in burnt marshmallow fluff.
It’s no surprise really. Donde has always been a stickler for quality, about doing something properly or not at all. That was his approach when he became immersed in coffee, and it’s being played out now at Rapt, where bags of single-origin Sao Tome Cacao beans have been sourced (despite it being pricier to buy green) to roast, for making bean-to-bar chocolate.
“You can’t be the best and the cheapest. We’re not trying to be something to everybody,” explains Donde. “We’re about absolute quality: no shortcuts. We are everything to some, but very little to everyone.”
Truth: 36 Buitenkant St. Open Monday to Saturday 7h00 to 18h00; Sunday 8h00 to 16h00. Croissant batches: 7am, 10am, 1pm. Playdate: Open Tuesday to Saturday 18h00 to 22h00. Contact: 021 201 7000, cafe@truth.capetown,
Rapt: 39 Buitenkant St. Open Monday 9h00 to 18h00; Tuesday to Saturday 9h00 to 21h00; Sunday 9h00 to 16h00. Contact: 021 201 7000, bliss@raptindulgence.com
The Art of Duplicity: Open Tuesday to Saturday 18h00.
IMAGES: Truth Coffee Roasting, Rapt, Carmen Lorraine
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