Seller Spotlight: Learn how White Whale's Coffee Roaster changed their mission

Ani_ — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 09:42:20 GMT

Hi Seller Community!

The TownSquare blog has several seller spotlights where you can learn more about local businesses, best practices, and Square resources. A spotlight that has inspired me, and one I wanted to share with you, is White Whale’s Coffee Roaster’s mission to help regenerate damaged reefs.

“After studying environmental science at university, and running her own coffee business for several years, Ali Slotemaker saw an opportunity to combine her two passions and give back to the Cairns community. Together with her husband Steve, they rebranded their coffee business to White Whale Coffee Roasters, a locally focused coffee roaster dedicated to making specialty coffee, and donating a portion of every sale towards the Reef Restoration Foundation (a not-for-profit that helps regrow coral on the Great Barrier Reef).”

The Content team spoke to Ali about building the business during a time when Cairns only had one or two coffee shops, how she went about the rebrand, and what’s next for White Whale Coffee.

Read the full interview here.

White Whale Coffee Roaster’s story is not the only one. The Seller Community would love to hear about your personal business experience, too. Feel free to reply to this post and answer any (or all) of the questions below:

How did you get started? What’s your business story?
Is there an organization, foundation, or event your business donates to?
What is your biggest challenge day-to-day of running the business?

Re: Seller Spotlight: Learn how White Whale's Coffee Roaster changed their mission

QuokkaCoffee — Wed, 19 Oct 2022 01:29:43 GMT

Hopefully it isn't too late for me to answer this question!

Since its inception, Quokka Coffee's always been about changing the hospitality industry one cup at a time through gestures great and small. 🙂 We just got back from MICE 2022 and are setting up the groundwork to support Cafe Smart next year.

The biggest challenge has always been finding the time and bandwidth to both operate and grow the business as a solo owner. Some days are better than others and, I suppose, the second biggest challenge is cutting myself some slack when I can't get around to doing everything I think I need to in 24 hours.

thread Re: Seller Spotlight: Learn how White Whale's Coffee Roaster changed their mission in Payments Troubleshooting

Seller Spotlight: Learn how White Whale's Coffee Roaster changed their mission

Re: Seller Spotlight: Learn how White Whale's Coffee Roaster changed their mission