Two Chimps Win Gold at 2026 Regional SME Awards

What are the SME Awards?

We’ve entered the Leicestershire & Rutland SME Awards for a few years now and have had some fantastic recognition, picking up both Gold and Silver awards across different categories.

The SME Awards are essentially for small or medium-sized businesses (defined as those with 250 employees or fewer) and are split into regions across the UK. If you are fortunate enough to pick up a Gold award, making you the winner in your category, then you are automatically put forward for the National event, which takes place later in the year.

So guess what? We’re going to the National Awards now, too!

Taking home the GOLD award

It almost goes without saying that being named a winner in any category is a fantastic achievement, but taking home the gold in the sustainability category means so much to us as a business.

From the very first days in operation, sustainability has been key in every decision we’ve made, so to stand on stage ten years later, collecting a Gold business award for our work around sustainability means we’ve been doing the right stuff – hence the new company slogan: awesome coffee doing awesome things.

Going green leads to gold

We have a target in place to achieve NetZero by 2040, and because of a lot of the work we’ve already done to lay the foundations and make that achievable, the Sustainability award is something we’re very proud of.

As regular readers and followers will know, we installed solar panels on our roastery roof at the end of January this year, along with a battery and an EV car charger, ready for when we swap out our current van for an electric model at the end of its life. This investment involved a match-funded grant and will enable us to power up to 98 per cent of the roastery with renewable energy, reducing our carbon footprint and energy bills.

All our coffee is freshly roasted and sold in fully recyclable packaging. We use recycled packaging and paper tape for all our wholesale deliveries, and we have motion-sensor lights downstairs in the roastery, while the upstairs benefits from natural light from the skylights.