Ten months ago, Ken Ellis opened Liquor Legends Lismore Heights on Ballina Road. The business was a liquor store and a general store providing food basics like bread, milk and snacks.

At the time, Ken told the Lismore App that Liquor Legends was not the finished product, saying, "The longer we are open, the more we will understand what the local community needs."

One of those community needs was a place to get a morning coffee. So, Ken submitted a development application (DA) to the Lismore City Council, which was recently granted.

The result is a coffee van in the driveway of the physical Liquor Legends store and the hiring of two new staff to run it.

"The liquor side of the business has been good," Ken said, "The general store side of the business we found quite slow. I put that down to essentially the times we were able to open. Our DA was from 10am to 10pm, so we put in a modification with council a few months ago to be able to open from 7am, not for the alcohol side, but so we could service the general store side for when people want bread and milk before 10am, and that's where the idea for coffee came from.

"Then we thought that no one will know we are open if we go from within the store, so I started looking around and thinking of different ideas, like maybe we could drop a shipping container in or something. The reason we went with the caravan was because it basically needed to be a mobile service unit. So, we went with that, and now we're able to offer all of the general store staples out of the out of the coffee van before we open the store.

"We've got bread, milk, muffins, banana bread, Byron Bay cookies, toasted sandwiches, all served from out of the the caravan. But, if someone came and wanted a bag of flour or whatever from inside the store, we can make that happen. The guys can just duck inside and grab them if someone had a desperate need for one of the general store items we didn't have in the van.

The most important question for coffee drinkers, is what type of coffee are you buying? Is it good coffee? Luckily, Ken has some friends who know a lot about coffee.

"I knew very little about coffee. I've been in pubs, and I've had coffee machines that just knocked out standard pub coffee. Some mates of mine have a coffee roasting business south of Sydney, and they helped me with the setup of the van. I went and chatted to them, just expecting to get some advice, and they were like, oh, mate, we'll get you a coffee machine. I was going to put the standard coffee machine in there, and they were like, no, no, don't go with that; it's not going to do the job. So, I ended up getting a big, shiny La Marzocco machine. It's not the Ferrari, but it's the absolute benchmark standard of coffee shops.

"Now, they're shipping coffee up to me from Taren Point. I've been through all of their roastery and tried a bunch of their different blends and have decided on serving a dark carnival blend at the moment. It seems to be a great allrounder that will go with a lot of the different styles of milk, such as oat, soy or almond and that sort of thing. And so I wanted something that would work across all of those."

Ken's has hired two new local staff members with coffee experience, Phoenix and Niki, who will be the smiling faces you see each Monday to Saturday morning from 7am to 10am.

"If the demand is there, we'll open up seven days," Ken added, "But at this point, we just thought we would kick off Monday to Saturday and see how it goes."

As an enticement for people to try out Liquor Legends Lismore Heights coffee, Ken is giving away 500 cups to members and those who join the membership program.

"When I was chatting to the manager, people have been turning up expecting to spend their money on coffee, but because we've given them the coffee for free, they've bought something else, which has been kind of nice."

Liquor Legends Lismore Heights is at 426 Ballina Road, just after the Rotary Drive roundabout and next to the Lismore Heights Post Office.