09/01/2026
**Before Hourglass was a café, it was almost a magazine.**
Years ago, back in the UK, I had an idea.
Tea always seemed to live in coffee’s shadow. There were endless stories about coffee — the growers, the regions, the craft — but tea felt massively underrepresented.
So I started developing a magazine.
The idea was to tell the stories of the people, farms, artists and cultures behind tea, and perhaps even pair each issue with a tea for readers to try.
I conducted interviews. Friends and family contributed pieces. Covers were designed.
Seven articles were completed.
And then… nothing.
Life happened, the magazine never quite made it into the world, and the idea was put away.
But the name had already found us.
While on holiday with the family in Norfolk, my wife and I walked past an antiques shop. In the window was an old hourglass.
The shop was closed, so sadly we never bought it.
But we stood looking at it and started talking.
Tea is about time.
Water temperature. Steeping. Waiting.
But it is also about stopping.
Making something for someone. Sitting down. Talking. Taking a few minutes away from everything else.
The hourglass seemed to represent all of that without simply putting the word “tea” on the front cover.
So the magazine became Hourglass.
Fast forward several years.
We had bought a coffee shop in Perth and needed a new name.
At some point, one of us said:
"Why don’t we use Hourglass?"
And suddenly the old idea had somewhere to go.
Then came the words:
Time Well Spent.
Because that was really what the original magazine had been about.
And it was exactly what we wanted the café to be about too.
The magazine never properly saw the light of day.
Hourglass did.
Funny how ideas sometimes take the scenic route.
