Yozo Otsuki, a former Goldman Sachs investment banker, founded Kurasu in Sydney in May 2013 as an online homeware shop before shifting focus exclusively to Japanese coffee equipment in 2015 and opening the first physical cafe, Kurasu Kyoto Stand, in August 2016. The word Kurasu means "to live" in Japanese, and the company's logo morphs the Japanese characters into shapes resembling the mountains and rivers of Kyoto, grounding the brand in the city even as it has expanded internationally to Singapore, Bangkok, Jakarta, and Dubai. The Nishijin Roastery, housed in a renovated traditional machiya townhouse, runs both a Giesen W6A and a Loring S35 Kestrel and even features a 24/7 coffee bean vending machine.