Notes Coffee – speciality coffee to the fore.

A fast-growing speciality coffee roaster with 12 café bars across London and a dynamic wholesale proposition, Notes says that it is raising the bar for coffee by combining the highest standards of quality and sustainability with a real passion for product.

THE PROPOSITION

Notes launched in 2010 but its origins date back to 2008, when co-founder Rob Robinson got into coffee as a gap year project after university. He held the franchise for a French coffee brand, operating on a street food market in London, when now business partner, Fabio Ferreira, walked past and told Rob “everything you’re doing is wrong”. The pair later set up a coffee cart and opened their first shop on St Martin’s Lane in 2010.

The company’s genuine passion for coffee quality is driven by head roaster Fabio Ferreira (pictured), with full traceability from farm to roastery. Coffee is sourced directly from farms worldwide, respecting the seasons to ensure a better quality product, before being lovingly roasted at the Notes’ Blackwall roastery based in in East London.

Notes specialise in serving only high grade, single origin Arabica coffee with minimum grading of 84 points. Coffees are available as beans or ground coffee in 250g and 1kg bags, as well as home compostable pods, which are Nespresso® compatible. The company produces over 2,000kg each week for retail and wholesale markets, as well as its own café bars, and existing customers include Colicci, Selfridges & Co, CH&Co and Brera.

THE WHOLESALE OFFER

“The business was built on our own café bars, with the roastery initially built to supply them, but we’ve got big plans to keep growing the wholesale offer. It’s tailored to customers’ needs to guarantee suitability and sustainability, combining the highest standards of quality and sustainability with a real passion for product to deliver a complete coffee proposition for operators – product, training and accessories,” says sales manager, Ali Anderson. “Peoples’ tastes are more discerning than ever before and if the quality of the whole coffee offer isn’t good enough, they will remember it. We provide our customers (and their customers) with confidence in the quality, ethics and sustainability of the coffee – backed by menu support and training opportunities to make sure their staff have the information and skills they need to serve it with excellence.”

THE SPECIALITY OPPORTUNITY

With specialty coffee continuing to drive growth in the UK coffee sector, Notes says that it is keen to reinforce the revenue-boosting potential of its products for independent operators in particular.

Research by Allegra Strategies has shown that the speciality coffee segment (coffees that score 80 or above on a 100 point scale) is expected to grow 13% year-onyear, outperforming the 10% growth predicted for the UK coffee market as a whole. Indeed, speciality now accounts for around 15% of all coffee served out-of-home, according to CBI data. Notes’ premium end to end solution encompasses quality coffee, training and accessories to help take advantage.

Ali Anderson adds: “We support operators in making the coffee service a key part of their business proposition. That starts with the quality of our speciality, sustainable coffees, but is only made possible thanks to the passion and expertise we have within the business.

“Business owners need to be switched on to the opportunities of speciality coffee because this is beyond a trend or a fad, it’s a part of their customers’ everyday lives. And we’re here to help them do that.”