What Should I Look For When Finding A New Office Coffee Supplier?

Look no further, you’ve found us!

Seriously though, what more do you need from a coffee supplier than one who uses only single-origin speciality coffee, roasted multiple times a week for freshness, delivered for free and is absolutely delicious?! You’re welcome.

For many of our customers, we are local, which means you get your office coffee in super quick time. Pair with the fact that we freshly roast our coffee multiple times each week and we can guarantee that you are getting freshest coffee available.

We currently hand deliver within a fifty-mile radius of our roastery in Rutland and only use a few establishments in each area to ensure variety in that area. It’s easy to go to the supermarket and pick up a jar of coffee or a bag of beans. However, you cannot guarantee the freshness, and often, it tastes rubbish. Either whole bean or ground, it has more than likely been roasted or ground several weeks, if not months before it has hit the supermarket shelves. Want fresh coffee for the office, but are based outside our current delivery route? No problemo. We courier office coffee, for FREE too.

Fresh is best

We truly believe that fresh is best; therefore, we roast multiple times each week and take care when roasting our beans. We want to make sure we are offering consistent coffee each week by using our skills and senses. When it comes to roasting, we put our all into each and every roast. When roasting a new coffee, to start, we find the density of the green coffee beans. Knowing this information gives us an idea of what temperature the beans can withhold when we start the roast.

If coffee is grown at high altitude where it is colder at night, then the density of the beans is, more often than not, going to be greater. This means we’ll need to roast at a slightly higher temperature to force energy through the tightly packed cell structure. We monitor the roast via a computer but use our sensory skills to control the roast by hand.

Stages of Coffee Roasting

As the roast progresses, we keep an eye out for our sensory milestones. These stages are known to us as grass, hay and bread. We call the first stage grass, due to the smell of the moisture being released. Hay has a slightly dryer grass smell and bread for when the bean is free of moisture; it starts to smell a little like baking bread.

When all 3 of these sensory milestones have passed, we are on our way to reaching the “first crack”. This is the point where the bean has entered an exothermic reaction and cannot take on any more energy, therefore it makes a cracking sound as the energy is released. We only ever roast our beans to the first crack and into the development phase that follows. We never roast into second crack, or indeed, anywhere near it as we feel that this can spoil the flavour.

For our espresso, we roast slightly darker than for our filter coffee beans. Read here to learn more about coffee roasting.

New coffee

When looking for the perfect coffee to add to our selection, we always source our coffee ethically. We don’t use big organisations such as Fairtrade or Rainforest Alliance as we prefer to work as directly as possible with the farmers instead. We choose small farms and single estates all over the world which means we have a tasty variety of coffee.

As we only source speciality coffee, the coffee is always the best of the best. For instance, speciality coffee needs to have been awarded a score of 80 or higher. If it doesn’t get the score, we won’t source it. By only sourcing the best, you can be sure of the best coffee for the office, no matter which of our coffees you choose.

We work closely with an importer who works with the farmer to help them grow the highest grade beans possible. They build good relationships with the farms and in turn, they become long term, business partners. Going direct means that the farmers receive a better price for their coffee too, as not only is their quality product worth more, but the supply chain is shorter also. The higher the score, generally, the better the price for the farmer.

We are often asked if our beans are Fairtrade. In short, sometimes they are, but they don’t need to be. Fairtrade guarantees a minimum price for commodity-grade coffee and therefore doesn’t apply to us as we only source speciality coffee. The price paid for speciality coffee is far, far greater than that offered by Fairtrade or Rainforest Alliance. We ensure our farms and farmers are paid very fairly for their beans, often paying up to 150% more than the price for a lower grade of coffee.

What else do I get for the cost of my coffee?

As well as receiving high-quality speciality coffee from us, we also deliver it to you by hand or by free courier service. We like to deliver our coffee to our customers by hand. This means we get to say hi and make sure everything is running smoothly. If you have any questions or need any help with your coffee machine, we are there to help.

If for some reason, we cannot deliver to you by hand, then we will send your freshly roasted office coffee to you, for free. To assure that you are drinking the freshest coffee possible, when ordering from us, we always recommend ordering little and often. This means every time you receive a delivery, you know it has been freshly roasted. As it’s free to deliver, we much prefer you to receive fresh coffee in the post every week. Winner!

Why choose us over any other roaster or the convenience of supermarket coffee?

Lives are busy and often, as much as we’d like to, it is difficult to order your goods from several different places rather than the convenience of getting everything in one place. We believe that using small, independent businesses means you’re getting a better quality product. Independent businesses suggest that they are expert in their field, and it certainly means that for us! We’ve been roasting coffee now for over 4 years, and we love it.

After deciding to start a family and that working as wedding photographers was not going to allow for that (certainly at the weekends!), Andy & Laura turned to their other love of roasting coffee. They’d started roasting coffee at home for their wedding clients and decided to turn it into a new venture to open up the opportunity for a lifestyle change. They said Goodbye to Brides & Grooms at the end of 2016 and hello to the London School of Coffee to learn everything they could about coffee.

As well as reading every book possible, they attended roasting courses and sensory courses but also continue to learn through every roast, which, for them, keeps it interesting. And yes, they did start a family and even named a coffee after their new addition!

So, if you want ethically sourced coffee with free delivery and free training from very knowledgeable chimps, then give us a call!

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