Experience Good Coffee Podcast

A rare insight into the future of the cafe & restaurant industry over the coming years, as we interview Specially Coffee expert, and Dark Woods Coffee co-founder, Paul Meikle-Janney.

What does the next trends in the UK cafe market look like? What can we learn from speciality coffee shops that have come and gone over the past few years?

Looking at the Allegra exec summary of the cafe industry, we are stating to see a saturation of cafes on the high streets, and the level of growth in new cafes is now flat-lining. Over this past year we’ve started to see a lot of the high-profile speciality cafes closing or being bought out. Taylor Street Baristas have gone under this year, and lots of small chains and cafes have been bought out by larger companies. A couple of chains trying to be more speciality-led have even been bought out by larger chains.

In this Podcast Paul looks at getting the food menu right alongside the coffee menu, how to avoid common mistakes in running a cafe and growing to a multi-site operation from one to a few sites.

This is unmissable if you are working in or interested in the cafe industry.

We’ve caught up with Coffee Industry Guru and Dark Woods Coffee Co-founder, Paul Meikle-Janney. Paul speaks about the often overlooked Batch Brew process, how the SCA Barista standards came about, and how he’s helped countless cafes and restaurants serve better coffee.

Paul Meikle-Janney got into coffee through the hospitality industry, working in hotels and discovering a love for coffee brewed well. He soon began his own company as a coffee consultant, working right across the industry with all sorts of outlets serving coffee. Offering advice on all things from sourcing to equipment.

I still remember first coming accross Paul when we started our first cafe in 2008 and Paul was brought in to do our barista training. The training really fired us up with the potential of coffee and how good it could be, and even remember being confused when the coffee company’s engineer would try to set our machine up differently to the way Paul had taught us. We had caught the infectious passion for creating a good coffee.

Paul takes time in this podcast to describe how good a batch brew of coffee can be - indeed it is his go to method in the roastery. He shares from his depth of knowledge for brewing good coffee, getting the correct ratios, and talks of his proudest achievement of being involved in writing Barista training with the SCA which is now used right across the world.

Here is someone who we deeply respect and understands coffee. He even shares tips for how the cafe industry needs to understand how to make it easier for customers to interact with the choice available.

This is a rare opportunity to hear insights into the world of coffee from one of the world leaders.

This is Paul Meikle-Janney - the interview - Part One.

The Washing Station is opening up trade channels for many of the smallholder farmers in the Rwenzori Mountains, Uganda.

Nick & Linda Castle of CLO Coffee went to Uganda to visit the people who grow speciality coffee which we import and roast. The washing station was started just 3 years ago as a way of connecting small holding farmers to the biggest exporter of coffee in Uganda. Ensuring that with good processing the would get paid a good price.

In 2019 Nick & Linda Castle of CLO Coffee visited the coffee farmers who are growing the coffee they roast in the uk at their roastery in Leeds. The Kisinga Washing Station in the Rwenzori Mountains, was established only 2-3 years ago. Generations of people have been growing high altitude arabica coffee throughout the Rwenzori mountains. So the coffee is high quality speciality, but until recently wasn’t being sold for a high premium due.

The main reason the coffee wasn’t yielding a high premium was because all the coffee is being grown in really small lots (back gardens) of all the people living around the mountains. The coffee drying and processing in small lots in their gardens meant the consistency of the quality of the coffees brought together wasn’t as high as it should be. 

The coffee in the area was known historically known as Drugar. Which was all because of this poor access to processing high grade coffee. 

When the Kisinga Washing Station opened by Jonny Rowland and a group of local people connected in Kisinga, they saw the potential of the coffee with a good processing facility. They talked with the biggest exporter of coffee in Uganda, and agreed that if they buy and process the coffee from hundreds farmers in the area, they will export it all through their channels. 

Three years on, and the quality of the coffee is consistently mid 80s (speciality grade) and farmers are being paid more than ever before, in cash when they pick their crop.

After running coffee houses for over 10 years, Nick and Linda continue to spend time remembering some amusing stories of interaction with different customers. To finish they do some quick questions with a former barista, Sally.

Living and working in a community public space means coming into contact with many different people from a variety of walks of life. One of the delights of humankind is our diversity. Too often we celebrate similarities and uniformity. However there is something occasionally amusing when we come together in a mutual space such as a cafe.

With hundreds of mums and Dads who frequented CLO coffee houses in Leeds, there was only one Messy Mum. For some reason, even though there were so many parents hanging out, one mum would come in regularly and hang out with her son, and no matter how little food she had, there would always be a trail of food around the seat, table, floor and probably crumbs leading up to the door. The funny thing was that whenever you mention messy Mum to other staff, everyone would know exactly who we were talking about.

Then there was Holiday Dad. The terrible assumption that because a Dad came in on his own with his two girls, would mean that his story would follow that of Jude’s Law’s character in the Holiday movie. We all assumed he was a widow, and that he brought his girls into the cafe to treat them to the simple things, and put a smile on their faces. Naturally his working wife appeared after about 6 months down the line but he still remains holiday dad 10 years on.

After running coffee houses for over 10 years, Nick and Linda spend time remembering some amusing stories of interaction with different customers and some bare neighbours. To finish they do some quick questions with our current duty manager Christina.

Guests (customers) are the heart of every cafe on every local high street. It is the reason cafe exist and why they are so endearing. The fact that you can get people of all walks of life, sitting sometimes at the same table (Wagamama helped pave the way for this to be more acceptable for us more private Brits). Its fascinating as the cage manager to watch interactions and the generally different characters in one local community.

Nick & Linda Castle, have been running CLO (Cielo) cafes for over 10 years in and around Leeds. Because it can be inappropriate or invasive to find out customer names, the staff team naturally default to describing a regular customer by their drink. “Nutmeg cappuccino”, “skinny, wet, mint mocha”, and “Dry cappuccino” are all genuine customers, which most staff would know when discussed.

Some customers went beyond their drink - Wee customer (not because she was small), was the affectionate name of an elderly lady who used to come in for her small latte and unfortunately more often than not would leave a wet patch behind, which we took in turns to clean up. It was always more bearable knowing she had really appreciated her visit to the cafe, and seen chatted with whoever she saw.

One morning, on opening, the shop was quiet and our manager happened to say “look at the window in that building opposite”. In hindsight I wished he hadn’t said it. There in front of us was the bare frontal of a large woman stood right up to the bedroom window, staring across the road. Fascinatingly she just did not move. It was one of those memorable moments in the ‘running a cafe’ life which you can’t unsee but wish you could. We never saw her again… fortunately she were saved the awkwardness of her ever turning up to order a latte.

Christina, a Duty Manager at CLO, also tells a story of when we had an issue with a wasp that wouldn’t go away, one hot summer’s afternoon. Working with so many staff and volunteers, you are never short of a laugh, but on this occasion, it was a fine line. Of course, the wasp was pretty annoying and some customers were a bit concerned, so one of our volunteers decided they would take the situation into their own hands. No, they didn’t reach for the glass and paper method, or the fly swat. They decided it would be a good idea to spray it with our table cleaner spray. However they also didn’t think about the fact that the wasp was in our cafe, and Christina looked up at the moment that the volunteer squeezed the trigger of the spray. Aiming at the wasp, they actually sprayed the entire face of one of our regular customers. No exaggeration. It went all over them. Fortunately the customer was fine and saw the funny side (after an initial awkward situation).

Nick & Linda Castle chat about how they got into founding and running a social business: CLO coffee. Starting in 2008 with a local community cafe on their local High Street. What were the key motivations and why a social business.

It started with the question; If money were no object and if you were completely fearless, what you want to do with your time? For Nick & Linda Castle, Co-Founders of CLO coffee, the answer was coffee and community. The local high street has for many years been highly contested. From the pitfalls of local retail shops competing with online and mega-brands, to the challenge of many out-of-town swanky shopping centres opening and shifting the centre of gravity.

Coffee is a tool. Its an accessible (affordable) way of keeping connection in a fragmented society. CLO coffee began life as Baraka; a social enterprise cafe in Garforth Main Street, Leeds, UK. It was essentially a community cafe, although in 2008 it had too much stigma of 50p cheap n cheerful mug of instant coffee and plastic chairs, to call it one.

A volunteer scheme was set up to give opportunities to young people, people with learning difficulties, people recovering from brain injuries (from a local support centre), retired, people out of work who wanted experience or new skills and people from the local church wanting to get involved. The icing on the cake was when profits were made and could be given away to local clubs, youth theatres, community centres and even flood defence.

Find out more about these cafes at CloCoffee.com/coffee-houses

We’re launching our Experience Good Coffee Podcast series with an interview with The Travelling Roaster – Sarah who was formerly a Coffee Roaster at CLO coffee in Leeds, and has spent much of the past year travelling around Europe to try and connect with Coffee Roasteries and volunteer for anti-child trafficking organisations.

“I'm currently residing in Eastern Europe. They call it the gateway to Central Asia because it's on the border with Kyrgyzstan.” Sara tells CLO coffee founder Linda Castle.

“It's very European kind of feel. Mixed with the Soviet Asian influences. And it just has this big city vibe to it. I’ll be going back and will be working in a school teaching maths.”

“I’ll be doing the odd bit of roasting as well. I often connect with different people, friends of friends of people on Instagram or wherever. I go off and do a bit of roasting with them. Find out what coffees they've imported in. And sometimes they ask for a bit of advice which I always feel very privileged to be involved in.”

“With coffee roasting it was like I just clicked with it. We had an Indian monsoon coffee last year at CLO coffee. I remember looking at and thinking all these beans are a lot bigger. So we put less in the machine and then the first crack was loads later than any of the coffee we've done before. And I kept thinking of missed it and it didn't look right. And I was like, what is going on?  And in the end, we sent an email to Dark Woods asking for help! And they were like, oh, yes, that's exactly what we did too.”

“As well, I'm doing some anti-trafficking stuff voluntarily with an organization called Sparking Freedom and they've been working mainly with girls in brothels out there. But my background is in awareness and prevention of human trafficking. I did that for a few years in Poland. So I've been helping them get that set up. We’ve created presentations for schools and villages to prevent girls from being trafficked. And we meet people and run events on the streets. Chatting to people and we're just explaining that human trafficking can happen to anyone. And often people are just not aware. And if they are aware, you can prevent that from happening to them.”

Nick & Linda Castle, co-founders of CLO coffee have launched their Experience Good Coffee Podcast to celebrate the good moments that happen over a simple cup of coffee. People all over the world are serving coffee to create memorable moments for their guests and customers. 

Coffee is a secret weapon for cultural transformation. We want to celebrate it and share good stories.