“Baby, I bought a coffee roaster…”

My thing with coffee started long before CC.

Back in 2009, I was working as a Coffee Master for Starbucks - coffee snobs, scoff away - during what I'd still argue was a pretty special period for the company.

I fell in love with coffee, obviously, but also everything around it. The ritual, the people, the stories behind coffees from different parts of the world, and the simple pleasure of handing someone something you'd made that they genuinely enjoyed.

I eventually found myself training teams across the South East and, in 2010, was named Starbucks Coffee Master of the Year.

The idea of doing something of my own with coffee never really went away.

Then came CC.

Fast-forward to the third lockdown of 2021.

By then I'd spent years working in design, user experience and start-ups, and had an idea: could I build a real business with just £1,000 on a credit card?

So I bought a little coffee roaster and CC - Credit Card Coffee - was born.

I sourced coffee, taught myself to roast it, designed the brand and packaging, built the website and started selling bags from home.

What was supposed to be a small experiment became a real little business. Hundreds of bags went out, customers came back, Courier magazine featured the story, and for a while I spent a lot of evenings roasting coffee.

Then life got busy. CC quietly went to sleep.

I nearly sold it. Three times.

Over the next four years, a surprising number of people asked whether they could buy CC.

Three of those conversations became pretty serious. Each time we got close, something stopped me.

It never quite felt right to let it go.

I think, deep down, I knew there was still a version of CC I wanted to make. So here we are.

CC, take two.

This time, I'm not interested in building a huge range of coffee or needing this to make big money.

I'm doing almost the opposite.

I'm searching for coffees I think are genuinely exceptional - unusual varieties, brilliant producers, experimental processes and flavours that make you stop for a second - and releasing them one at a time.

Tiny quantities. One coffee roughly every quarter. When it's gone, it's gone.

It also gives me the freedom to rethink CC with every release. Different stories, different artwork, different ideas. The identity can move with the coffee rather than every bag having to look the same.

The coffee changes. CC changes with it.

Why bring it back?

Because I missed it.

I missed hunting for coffee. I missed roasting. I missed designing things just because I thought they'd be cool. And I missed the slightly ridiculous satisfaction of putting something I'd made into a box and sending it to someone.

CC doesn't need to become enormous.

Actually, keeping it tiny is kind of the idea.

Find something extraordinary. Roast a tiny amount of it. Make something interesting around it. Share it with a handful of people.

Then go looking for the next one.

Welcome back to CC.