The City of Imatra and Lehmus Roastery have signed a long-term lease and cooperation agreement for the Imatrankoski area. New premises, a café and a new rafting experience center will open for the roastery before summer in the area around Finland's oldest attraction, the Imatrankoski rapids and the dam that controls it.
The same building complex will also house the Wilderness Museum and the sauna terrace restaurant, which will be called Lappeenranta's Dream Sauna World.
The collaboration is natural, as Imatra is known not only for its rapids but also for its reputation as a factory town, so a production facility manufacturing legalized stimulants fits well with the city's image.
In addition, Imatra has purchased significantly more coffee from the roastery over the years than the city of Lappeenranta, so the name of Lehmus Roastery may also change to Vuoksi Roastery as part of the whole.
“Although I think we will serve tea to the city management and politicians instead of coffee in the future. It calms them down and helps them concentrate. We have heard that more investigations are being carried out in Imatra about other politicians than in Lappeenranta about the location of the multi-purpose arena,” says Arttu Muukkonen, CEO of Lehmus Roastery.
The city is permitting and renovating the Lehmus dam to turn the roastery premises into a café, and local construction company Evälahti is turning the rustic-looking loft building into a café even faster and cheaper than Lappeenranta renovated the factory store for Fazer. The café named Satamatie 6 will now operate in Imatra under the name Ylisyöksy 6, in keeping with its address.
You can also go down the rapids after a long break.
“In the past, local adventure entrepreneurs let people across the rapids on a cable and in a rubber boat amidst the foam. In the future, during the rapids shows, you can explore the canyon in floating coffee cups. They are especially popular among stag and hen parties, although you have to be careful in the lower reaches so you don't end up on the wrong side of the border,” Muukkonen says.
A step towards carbon neutrality
“Responsibility is important to us, and here we can use truly green energy. In Lappeenranta, all the greenery flows once a week as jet fuel into the tanks of Ryanair planes.”
Due to the collaboration, the largest events in South Karelia will gain new roastiness in their content. Imatra Big Band Festivals will feature coffee bean clubs, where the background rhythm is created with coarse sacks of raw beans.
As a pre-start to the Imatra race, the tires will be warmed up with a hand-operated coffee grinder competition.
The fox costumes familiar from Kettu coffees and their marketing will also appear on the streets of Imatra in the future.
“We heard that the ex-mayor had bought hundreds of cowboy hats for a band, so we were asked to make fox costumes for them, including children's sizes, so that the whole family could enjoy furry work. We got a thousand costumes.”
Fox costumes will be distributed today in front of Finland's largest wooden school, Mansikkala, to anyone interested at 1:00 PM.
In honor of the collaboration, a dark roasted Imatrankoski coffee was created.
"Yes, we haven't considered the housing issue yet, but I don't think any of the office holders live in Imatra, so we can cover that stretch of the highway by carpooling with the management."
The relocation agreement will be celebrated both live and online. Today, April 1st, the rock band Osmo's Cosmos will perform at the Imatrankoski Dam during an extraordinary rapids show at 2:00 PM.
Instead of the traditional Finlandia, the band will perform Lehmus Roastery's Hymn to Fox Coffee. The performance will be filmed live online by Imatra's own johnnydepp, top photographer Nestori Lönngrén .
Lehmus Roastery's online store has released a dark-roasted Imatrankoski coffee today. Subscribers will receive an event brochure about the Imatra summer, whether they like it or not.
Imatrankoski coffee is available for a week at a lower price than usual, so head to the online stores now!
For more information about Lehmus Roastery's new hometown, visit www.kansallisihme.fi .