Yesterday marked our 9th Birthday - can you believe it? That’s nine whole years of roasting delicious, ethical coffee - and fuelling coffee lovers in our Dear Green place and beyond! And what a journey it has been. Over the past nine years, we’ve achieved so much as an indie roastery - and none of it would be possible without you, our wonderful coffee-loving community. You rock! We are so lucky to be able to do what we love 9 years on, with our same ethical, founding principles. 2020 has been a tough one for small business, so we’re extra grateful for your continued support throughout this very strange year.
When planning how we would celebrate our big day this year, we thought it would be nice to take a look back at some of our favourite moments in Dear Green History. So with that said, why not make yourself a cup of the good stuff, sit back and let us take you on a trip down memory lane as we reminisce on some real good times…
Launching The Glasgow Coffee Festival
On the 6th of December 2014, hot on the heels of us launching the Scottish Aeropress Championship, Dear Green hosted the inauguralGlasgow Coffee Festival in the city’s iconic artist complex, the Briggait. This year (against the odds of 2020) we came together once again to champion Glasgow’s thriving coffee scene, at our 6th annual festival! Although things were a little different this year, we managed to (safely) bring Glasgow's coffee community together and celebrate the very best cafes, baristas and roasteries in the city!
Over the years, the festival has gone from strength to strength, attracting coffee lovers from far and wide. In 2015 together with Coffee Nexus we hosted the UK's first Coffee Roasting Championship and in 2018, with help from our brilliant friends at KeepCup, we were able to make Glasgow Coffee Festival the first global coffee event to go single use cup free!
Upgrading our Roastery
Today, ourRoastery is situated in the heart of Glasgow’s creative East End.However, it wasn’t always this way. Our roasting journey first started by the River Clyde at Airds Lane way back in 2011. Fun fact, ourGoosedubbs blend is actually named after the lane behind our original roastery (the name refers to the puddles that the geese would paddle about in back in Medieval times). In 2015, we upped sticks and moved to our current home - this not only allowed us to roast at a larger scale but also to offer barista classes, service coffee equipment, manage our online shop, store and quality control our coffees andhost events too!
Winning ‘Glasgow’s Favourite Business’
Each year, The Glasgow Business Awards serves as a reminder of Glasgow’s diverse, thriving and inspiring business community. In 2018, we were honoured to be named ‘Glasgow’s Favourite Business’! At Dear Green, we’re all about supporting our fellow indie businesses - and helping each other grow. If our nine years in business has taught us anything, it is that Glasgow’s community spirit is second to none, it therefore meant the world to us to receive this prestigious award, voted for by the amazing people of the city.
Visiting incredible coffee farms
If you’ve been following our journey for a while, you’ll know that our ethical sources lie at the heart of our company.Not only are we committed to always having direct trade links and to personallyvisiting the coffee origins to form and maintain relationships with importers, exporters and producers, we also look after the other side of our supply chain by being SALSA accredited ensuring a 'food safe' and fully traceable product with the audits and record keeping to justify the hashtags! Over the years, we’ve personally visited a number of incredible coffee farms from theFazenda Pantano Estate in Brazil to the Rama Woman's Association in Burundi. Here are a few snaps from our travels so far…
Investing in our processes
2015 was a big year for Dear Green. During this year, we turned five and won funding from Scottish EDGE, a funding competition aimed at identifying and supporting Scotland’s innovative, high growth potential entrepreneurial talent. This funding allowed us to invest even more into our processes, to help make us even better at what we do.
Fuelling the stars at T in the Park
In 2016, the wonderful team at DF kindly asked us along to help fuel their epic festival team at T in the Park. During the mud-filled weekend, Scottish Aeropress champion James Aitkin also brewed ourFazenda Pantano blend backstage for LCD Soundsystem - it doesn’t get much cooler than that eh? Here are a few shots from our setup.
Launching the Dear Green Cafe Project.
In 2015 we also launched our Dear Green 10 Week Project which was so successful, we relaunched it the following year as our Dear Green Cafe Project. Located at the Clyde Street entrance to The Briggait, Glasgows old fish market, now home to the annual Glasgow Coffee Festival! At the cafe, we showcased our freshest roasts of the week through a variety of brewing methods. We were also able to stock some of the most popular products from our online shop, kitting up Glasgow's coffee community and keeping them fuelled!
In 2019 we continued our love affair with cafe culture by setting up Project just up the road, in Glasgow's creative South Block. Here, you can expect daily changing coffee bean offerings from our seasonal roastery selection. Dialled in on our state of the art equipment to showcase the naturally delicious flavours from each coffee producer.
Collabing on some epic beers
Over the years, we’ve been lucky enough to collab with some incredible businesses from Glasgow and beyond. This includes a handful of epic beer brands such as Overtone Brewing Company (Ethopian IPA),Drygate (convergence1),Williams Bros Brewing Co and (Chokka Blokka and Orinoco). Cheers to that! Check out some snaps from our collabs below! Who would you like to see us collaborate with in 2021?
Fuelling our frontline workers
2020 has been a challenging year for all of us - especially those working on the frontline. Using our business as a force for good is something that’s always been close to our heart, so it was an honour to be able to help fuel some of the country's incrediblefrontline workers throughout the lockdown. Lisa explains, “Lockdown has been hard for everyone and as the restrictions start to ease, we are so glad that with the help of Falcon Speciality we can give back a little something to the NHS heroes who are on the frontline of the COVID-19 crisis. Supplying freshly roasted coffee to NHS workers in Glasgow has been so rewarding and has allowed us to support in the best way we know how!” To the NHS frontline staff who’re working tirelessly in the battle against Covid-19 - we salute you!
We hope you have enjoyed our little trip down memory lane as much as we have. Here’s to many more years of roasting tasty coffee and keeping our brilliant community fuelled.
Bring on year 10 and all of the memories that Team Dear Green, our customers and our community will create together! We can't wait to source, roast and drink loads more delicious coffee!
