St Austell Brewery has been an eminent, well-loved provider of award-winning beers, quality coffees and fresh, locally sourced pub food across Devon, Cornwall and Somerset for more than 150 years. In the last few years, Cornish Coffee has been working with St Austell to produce a bespoke fair-trade coffee blend – Brewer & Bean – in order to help them enter a new corner of the market: the café industry.

Despite already offering coffee at their pubs, inns and hotels, St Austell Brewery wanted to target those customers who go out looking for a café or coffee shop rather than a pub.

“We felt that developing and marketing our own brand of coffee would be the way to do this,” says Nick Hemming, Catering Development Manager of St Austell Brewery. “If we had our own coffee, we could lead with that and offer an alluring alternative to high-street coffee shops: top-quality coffee served by trained baristas inside comfortable surroundings where you can also order bar meals and alcoholic drinks if you choose.”

Nick continues, “Since St Austell Brewery pubs are open all day, a new and exclusive coffee brand could attract additional customers mid-morning and mid-afternoon, which are traditionally quieter trading periods.”

With this in mind, St Austell Brewery turned to Cornish Coffee to help them to develop this brand – and Brewer & Bean was born. Part of the reason they chose us was because of our legacy and renown in the coffee industry and the comprehensive on site barista training and support that we offer. They were also enticed by our commitment to the environment, by using funds accrued from coffee sales to purchase and protect vast sections of rainforest in South America where the coffee is grown.

St Austell Brewery wanted to be a part of this, which is why they chose to offer a fair trade blend. They could see the environmental benefits of fair trade coffee and a partnership with a conservation-focused company like us, and how attractive these benefits have become to coffee drinkers.

“With Brewer & Bean, we want to inspire our own customers in the way Cornish Coffee inspires theirs,” says Nick. “We are sharing with our customers what they are doing to help save the rainforests with each coffee purchase they make.”