Lets throw it back to 2023…

In the spring of 2023, myself, Joe, and my partner Ellie, set off travelling by train across Europe, visiting over 15 countries in three months. We were always dipping into coffee shops throughout our journey, whether that was in the ancient, narrow streets of Nîmes, France, or the wide boulevards surrounded by communist architecture in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Along the way, we would playfully discuss the possibility of opening our own coffee shop back home. We'd talk about everything: how we'd dress it, what would be on the menu, the music we'd play, the atmosphere we would want to create and where it would be. We'd dissect every coffee shop we visited, picking out the little things we liked and imagining how we'd bring them together for our own shop. The only problem was that we'd spent most of our savings on travelling, as well as buying a converted campervan, a Renault Master, the year before.

In June 2023, we were wandering around the windmills at Kinderdijk in the Netherlands when, much to Ellie's bemusement, I suggested we could turn our campervan into a coffee shop! We spent the rest of our walk around the windmills discussing how we could possibly pull it off.

"We could even call it Master Coffee Company, after the make of our van," I remarked.

Ellie wasn't entirely convinced by the idea, but eventually gave me the go-ahead to start making it happen.

At the time, I was working in a chain coffee shop and Ellie was working in an office. Neither of us was particularly looking forward to returning home and going back to our corporate jobs. My job in particular went against a lot of my personal values. Recycling was practically non-existent, plastic packaging piled up every day, most of the products came from overseas and the quality often left a lot to be desired. I disagreed with the reliance on cow's milk, and the company's sustainability pledges often felt more like a way of making themselves look good than something they genuinely intended to follow through on. I wanted out.

During our final months travelling, we started putting the wheels in motion. We'd sit on trains sketching designs, making plans and sending emails to local events. We were getting the ball rolling, although, at that point, it still felt more like a dream than something that would actually become a reality.

Once we returned home, with very little money to our names, we decided to max out our credit cards and get started. We bought a home espresso machine (how we managed to work with that machine for three months, I'll never understand as it was super slow!), painted an old pallet to use as our bar and spent our time hunting down old coffee jugs and bits and pieces we could repurpose and reuse. We were on a seriously tight budget and wanted to upcycle as much as possible.

By August 2023, we were up and running, serving our first coffees at a local car show in Somerset.

By January 2024, we were already ripping apart the inside of our campervan to create more space and add another countertop for our brand-new commercial coffee machine.

We managed to survive our first full festival season and year as a buisness by September 2024, but unfortunately, our dear Renault Master didn't quite make it. After pulling onto our driveway following our final festival of the season, the clutch decided it had had enough and gave up on us. This meant doing a few events from a gazebo (something we can safely say we'll never do again!).

After months of seemingly never-ending mechanical issues, we eventually decided it was time to say goodbye to our beloved Master.

Although it was a sad moment, we were also incredibly excited about the prospect of creating a brand-new coffee unit, this time designed entirely around our own ideas.

By January 2025, we'd bought our new unit: a 2021 white Peugeot Boxer van. The next challenge was kitting it out and turning it into the coffee van we had imagined. This was no easy task. We were both still working Monday to Friday, meaning we only had weekends to get stuck in. We also had a fairly limited understanding of how to build a coffee unit from scratch (thank you to youtube for all your help). And, just to make things even better, it was January. It was absolutely freezing! We had an event booked for the first weekend of April, which gave us just three months to get everything finished. So, we cracked on.

Three months later, Master Coffee Co. had a brand-new face, a surfboard decked coastal vibes coffee van. I lived by the coast all of my life, spending nights with friends having barbecues on the beach, watching surfers rip waves. Ellie lived up on picturesque Dartmoor, both of us always loving our South West unlike a few other friends who would runaway to cities. We wanted our van to represent our upbringing and the best of the South West. We wanted our van decked with surfboards and coastal summer charm as well as use the best products from the South West to really show why South West is best!

Throughout 2025, we found ourselves having to turn down events because we were already booked elsewhere. We were in demand!

In March 2026, I started searching for something I'd wanted for the best part of five years: a Suzuki Carry, a tiny Japanese microvan. Eventually, we found one for sale in Cambridge and made the trip over to collect it to make it Master Coffee Unit 2.

With our first double-event weekend booked in for April, there was no time to waste. We got straight to work on turning our newest addition into the second Master Coffee Co. unit.

And here we are today. Looking forward to the 2027 and the future. We are looking to increase our South West connection by using Oat Milk made in Cornwall (we are still on the search for West Country Soya milk!), we are looking at introducing more batteries and solar panels to our van so we can be reliably off grid. We will see you out on the road!