Bye Bye Coffee by the Casuals

dfk41

Just had an email from them saying they took the decision to shut
Thank you and goodbye
We’re sorry to say that our little business has reached the end of the road, and just wanted to write a quick note to explain why and to say thank you.

You will have seen that for a couple of months now the shop has been down. We made a decision in August that we would bring the business to an end. It was clear that it either needed about £20k ploughed into it to make it fully functioning and viable, or it needed to close. Ultimately, with economic uncertainty looming [as an aside: General Election now] it was the better choice to wrap it up and return to gainful employment elsewhere. Calvin took wages for two weeks in the whole run, and every other penny went on stock, rent, and Shopify.

DavecUK

Always a shame when a roaster closes…..

Waitforme

Yes, was sorry to get that email.

Must be a tough market to operate in.

Rob1

That’s sad. I checked into their website the other week just to see what was happening and was disappointed to see they were out of action, I think because of roaster trouble. I was always sceptical of their plan to start a roastery with a 1kg intending to support and provide income for two people while renting quite a large space! Not sure if they ever did mobile coffee thing, working events, or just tried to sell the roasted coffee on market stalls….I’d always thought their marketing was a bit odd - people want coffee roasted by professionals not “casuals” - not that I’m doubting thet were well capable. They always seemed to be sold out of things whenever I looked so maybe they had some supply issues to deal with.

DavecUK

Rob1 A 1 kilo roaster is to see if you have a viable business opportunity or not…you cannot run a business on one because it’s far too many hours for very little coffee. A 5kg roaster can roast more coffee in 90 min than a 1kg can do in a day.

MediumRoastSteam

Or maybe the demand wasn’t there? Hence why they kept the 1kg roaster? I once ordered a some coffee from them and the roast date were at least 4 days older (o think it was more, but can’t day it for sure). than the date I ordered. Who knows. I wish them good luck in the future.

Rob1

MediumRoastSteam yeah, they had roast days. I think initially all roasting was done one day a week but then that increased to twice a week.

coffeeintime

Late to the party. Stumbled here from google because I do check every now and again to see if these guys are back in business. I just had a shit roast from my ususal supplier and I got fobbed off. So was looking to see who to switch to.

Casuals coffee do seem to have a cafe business where they are, the roasting was a side gig. The email I received made it sound like their machine was broken I assumed it was a big commercial machine which was a complete write off - maybe needing a £30K-£40K replacement. I ddin’t know it was a puny 1KG roaster that is about £3K tops?

it’s a big shame, I bought from them a few times. Would have been nice to still buy from them. If they had a bigger following, maybe they could have crowdfunded a new roaster or something. Pledge x for a new roaster and get x worth of beans deliverered over time.

dfk41

coffeeintime Thats one point of view! Another could be that running a business with a 1kg roaster made no sense, added to the fact that they were trying to learn on the job….the results spoke for themselves