Part One: A love affair with coffee. And how not to buy a van…
I first remember my love of coffee starting around 2003.
I had to go for an allergy test and they told me to avoid dairy for a bit (that was never gonna last was it?)
Back then there weren’t alternative milks in every supermarket and vegan options on most menus.
But I found I could order soya lattes from my local Starbucks.
I was a beauty therapist newly renting space in a hair salon at that time, and so every day I turned up with my lattes and eventually converted all the gals to do the same with daily orders for the whole salon.
At that point, the coffee and brunch scene was really starting to kick off in London. And I started to take a keen interest in all the antipodean places that popped up.
Kaffeine in Fitzrovia was (and still is) one of the best coffee places out there. Run with so much heart and passion, it hasn’t changed much in nearly 20 years because it works so well.
I was living in Surrey then, but I used to travel up to town every weekend to have brunch at my new found favourites like The Providores - sadly now closed, La Fromagerie, Caravan’s first spot in Exmouth Market, and Lantana in Charlotte Street.
There were so many good places then, it felt really different and there was such a buzz in London as the cafe culture took off - I loved it. It was the quality and simplicity of these places that made them stand out against everything else. I was hooked.
So much so that a good friend of mine will tell you that I even used to take my own (non-sh*t) coffee + bread to the local greasy spoon that she’d drag me to with a hangover.
And so, at some point I left Starbucks and lattes behind.
Instead becoming one of many in the queue for Monmouth at Borough.
Maybe because I was popping to the market and wondered what was going on. Maybe because they were so different to the other coffee places out there at the time (and still are). Or maybe because they were SE London based, I don’t know.
But what I did know was that the coffee was always exceptional and the atmosphere and service was always perfect. And not just in an East London hipster kinda way, but in a “we’re good at this and we do what we do with pride” kinda way.
Since then, I’ve had black coffee, less coffee, bullet proof coffee, decaf coffee, even given up coffee for a bit.
But where I am right now with coffee is somewhere quite different. It’s somewhere that’s not just about what I like, but about how I can share this love with others.
When I first started RMB I just wanted to serve decent breakfasts. That’s why granola was one of the first things I did. I thought one day I would maybe own a cafe – a teeny tiny place where there were just a few tables and a tiny menu (I’m now leaning more towards a bar or cafe in Ibiza FYI but we’ll see 😉).
I honestly didn’t see myself becoming a cook (or particularly successful), but the catering element suddenly took off about two years in as the need for fresh, nourishing, flavour-packed food grew.
And it’s gone well and truly beyond breakfast now – thanks to a lot of extremely hard work that shows no sign of letting up. I wish I could say that it was easy, but as any small business owner will say - you never ever get a day off, it’s there all the time. And building Rock My Bowl has taken chunks from me.
So, you might ask… why TF would I take on the extra stress of a coffee van when I already have a full-on catering business and I’m stretched in all directions most days?
Well, good question (that perhaps I wish I’d asked myself!).
It was partly because lots of clients wanted coffee at the shoots and breakfast events we catered.
I’d never really found the right coffee company to partner with, and in the back of my mind I kept thinking… “you need to serve coffee too. GOOD coffee.”
We’d been trying to move to a bigger premises for a couple of years. But what I want is pretty specific and hasn’t really presented itself as yet. So instead, in summer 2023 I thought right, ok, no premises. Let’s focus on the coffee.
I know. Let’s buy a van and convert it!
Oh, oh, I know… let’s buy a SECOND-HAND coffee van!
And so, without having done anywhere near enough research. And going in pretty blind - I bought a second-hand coffee van. And funnily enough, like anything second hand, it was not perfect.
But I hadn’t realised quite how far from perfect it was.
To be continued…
