CUP WINNERS

Joanna Weinberg, Teals

Of all the step changes in our everyday lives that have taken place over the past decade – social media, environmental awareness, working from home – to some, one of the highest impacts could be our daily cup of coffee. Begone dried instant, stirred thoughtlessly into a cup of boiling water! Coffee is an art form: from the selection of the bean, the type of process it has gone through, the roast, the grind, right through to the personalised making of each order: the balance and strength of the coffee, the type, temperature and texture of the milk. There are worldwide roasting and brewing competitions, new career pathways, and a whole new language alongside. Whilst the cost of it has gone dramatically up alongside, when you think of what goes into your flat white, you could, at the same time, see it as extraordinarily good value.

When Teals was in its planning, great coffee was a key part of our vision. Somewhere beautiful and open, with soaring architecture and wide, long views, that served excellent food, sold the best in local provisionsand, always, a darn good cup of coffee.

For that, we turned to Origin Coffee in Cornwall, arguably the leading coffee roasters of the UK. It’s Origin’s beans that are brewed for every cup in the cafe and in the cheery yellow packets of our Teals house coffee on the shelves which the barista will grind by request to your preferred size. The company was founded in Cornwall in the early 2000s by Tom Sobey, who grew up in a family that ran a coffee franchise. Having been, as he describes it, ‘rubbish’ at school (he left with 1 GSCE), he took a job first driving his Dad’s coffee delivery van then moved into a sales role. He developed an interest in the scented beans – to be honest, he didn’t feel like he had many other options - but it was a year of travelling in Australia in the late 90s, which really gave him the bug. There, coffee culture was advanced: that’s where the flat white was invented, the difference between steamed milk and textured milk explored, the new art form perfected.

Whilst in Australia, Tom trained as a barista and returned with an idea and vision for the future of speciality coffee, deciding to set up Cornwall’s first Roastery. ‘I had a huge advantage at the time – I could make a really great cup of coffee. So when I turned up at sales meetings, whether to Rick Stein or Watergate Bay, all I had to do was make them a coffee to nail the sale.’ Origin Coffee was born. He spent four years learning the ropes and building relationships, at first working with a private label roaster to produce the beans before he could afford his own roaster in 2008.

Origin has always been about both quality and ethics. A hugely important part of the business is its relationship with growers and farmers around the world. ’From the very start, we were Organic, Fair Trade and Forest Alliance certified, which was a real point of difference at the time.’ But the flaw in Fair Trade can be the quality. ‘We created our own direct trade model, started visiting farms, auditing them, looking at what happens to the wastewater, how the people who worked on the farm were looked after,’ he says. They created their own ethical standards for Direct Trade, considering the people who cultivated the coffee they sourced, environments in which it was grown, education and much more.

As well as multiple UK and World coffee competition accolades, the company also attained B-Corporation status in 2020. This certification is recognised as the highest standard of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability, covering a wide array of factors from environmental impact to employee benefits. It’s an achievement of which Tom’s deservedly proud, validating Origin for who they are and what they stand for. Placing a marker in the sand – not a finish line, but a starting point from which to keep progressing in the right direction and striving to do better.

Like so many things, the pandemic took homebrewing to a whole new level. Web orders quickly grew six-fold, and at the same time, they became market leaders in developing compostable capsules. Now, Origin’s coffee offering is split between the mainstay espresso beans that are the base of the milk coffees, and the speciality feature coffees which tend to be drunk long and black and have extremely different flavour profiles. Tom’s own choice at home, which he brews to Specialty Coffee Association standards: 60-80g of coffee per litre, with the filter machine set to 4 minutes. ’I like adventure and variety of it. We buy the beans in small lots and once they’re sold out, that’s it.’

Tom’s tip for home coffee brewing? Grind your own and then brew it immediately. ’You need to brew coffee within 15 minutes of grinding it – otherwise you lose 65% of the aroma,’ he says. ‘And what’s the point in that? The smell is half the pleasure.’

teals.co.uk origincoffee.co.uk