By: Bernadine Rodrigo
To those who enjoy a good night out in the city, The Re.Pub.Lk is not a name unheard. However, while the utterance of the word Kaffeine out loud may remind one of his or her daily kick-starter, its spelling can leave one wondering. Situated just next to The Re.Pub.Lk on Hospital Street, Colombo 1, with its exciting and comforting ambience, is the shiny and new all-day restaurant, bar, and café, Kaffeine.
Established by The Re.Pub.Lk owners Kumara Chandrasena and Rukshan Meegahage, Kaffeine is The Re.Pub.Lk’s daytime counterpart for those who’d prefer to spend their days out, rather than their nights.
Concept of Kaffeine
It is meant to be an all-day breakfast, lunch, and café spot, joyously with good wifi, cosy atmosphere, good food, and local coffee, located in the heart of Colombo. Chandrasena and Meegahage have a vision of the spot ideally being a hangout café and workspace with affordable prices, and a prime location for building a community atmosphere. Being locals themselves, the duo would like to focus on using locally sourced ingredients. “Aside from being a cafe, we want to create an ‘experience’ for customers who visit. We aim to be activity based from paint and sip workshops, book club meets, and more,” they said.
The two come from two diverse yet similar backgrounds, one coming from the hospitality sector and the other from finance. They claim that they both have the same passion – to create a café built on three pillars – locally sourced quality coffee and food, rustic and cosy ambience, and great customer experience.
With the opening happening downstairs, Chandrasena’s wife Tina, decided to hold her annual “Communiti” popup, which took place on 26 January to coincide with the café’s opening for the third consecutive year. The popup featured a number of local vendors and even the occasional foreigner, all of whom who had displayed their various products ranging from fancy stationary and houseware to jewellery and baked goods. Tina’s own stall, representing her business “True” was also present which displayed handcrafted baby teething toys, rattles, children/adult accessories, and children’s tableware, inspired by the couple’s adorable little daughter.
The popup gave an opportunity to truly reflect on the amount of perfectly usable home grown products Sri Lanka has to offer, including amazing talent for art, and great locally produced sanitation products.
