Bristol Twenty Single Origin Coffee

Inside the careers at Bristol Twenty

Have you thought about a career in the coffee industry?

This March 5th – 10th marks National Careers week. Highlighting the importance of young people in education choosing the career path that’s right for them.

Explore the full range of tea & coffee

In recent years, there has been a high rate of youth unemployment due to lack of advice and support available.

National Careers Week is a week long celebration of careers guidance and free resources in education. The aim of the week is to provide young people with an accurate picture of what opportunities are available in the career path they wish to take, and to support them in their choices, allowing them to reach their full potential.

National Careers Week is also a fantastic week for highlighting careers young people may never have thought of before. We all know the career paths for becoming doctors, dentists and teachers but what if this path isn’t for you?

Within the restaurant business coffee shops are the fastest growing niche and after crude oil coffee is the most sought after commodity in the world, worth around $100 billion worldwide.

A definitive report from Allegra World Coffee Portal, Project Cafe 2017, revealed that the UK branded coffee shop segment is set to reach 9,400 outlets and make £6 billion annual revenue by 2021. It is predicted that branded coffee chains will continue to perform strongly and continue to meet the intense competition with innovative strategies. With the increasing popularity of coffee shops, it is predicted that coffee shops will become the first choice for British consumers and that coffee shops will outnumber pubs in the UK by 2030.

This is great news for those involved in the coffee industry, like us here at Bristol Twenty. We have a collective total of over 60 years in the coffee and catering industries, so you can be assured we know our stuff. We are constantly striving to be the best we can possibly be, evolving with each year and offering our customers the latest trends where appropriate. Our philosophy is simple we want to help our customers serve the very best range of hot drinks possible.

For National Careers Week, we have rounded up the team here at Bristol Twenty to give you a glimpse into the coffee industry, allowing you to see how each member of the team got into the coffee industry and their favourite parts of the job.

If you like what you hear, why not consider the new role we have available?

Rory Ireland – Sales Director

Rory has been the Sales Director at Bristol Twenty for over 12 years, his father was the founder of Bristol Twenty and he has continued to help run the family business since his passing. When he was younger he wanted to be a Lawyer, instead he has worked in the restaurant trade since leaving school, working his way up the ladder, which has proved incredibly valuable experience for running Bristol Twenty on a Day to Day basis.

I had been working in the restaurant trade since leaving school, from pot wash to operations manager. I was working for a well known Latin American restaurant as there new openings manager, when Roy Ireland (the founder of Bristol Twenty Coffee co & my dad) was diagnosed with cancer. I was working 100 plus hour weeks and desperate for a change. I came back to help dad out for 6 months and the rest is history.

The industry has changed so much since I came into it, and there are so many different roles available. These days you have to get as much experience as possible and decide what area you want to be in. . You also have to have a real passion for coffee and for learning. Even the barista’s role has developed in my time into a real calling rather than something people fall into as a stop gap, which is great for the whole industry.

I’m biased as I designed a lot of them, and it changes with my mood, but at the moment I’m really into our 21TEN blend, not just for the taste but I love the background to it and the links to the Above & Beyond charity.

I’m a purest most of the time and drink my coffee as an Americano. Occasionally I’ll have a flat white if I’m being indulgent, but I really like to taste the original coffee. You can’t beat a traditional biscotti biscuit when you need that sugar hit though.

Learning new stuff, and being creative and when people appreciate the result its a real buzz.

After reading Jeff Koehler’s ‘Where the wild coffee grows’ I’m really interested in lost coffee’s ie wild coffee’s that have almost been forgotten or have fallen out of trend, such as coffee from the Ethiopian cloud forests. I think there must be coffees out there that really haven’t had their day

Oh I could never choose. We like to work with people that we get on with on a personal level, so it’s always about the people.

I’d like to see a slow steady growth and bring as many products as possible in house. It will allow us more control over our products and allow us to ensure our ethical principles are upheld. I’d also like to start discovering some of these forgotten coffee’s for myself and have more interaction with our growers at source.

The variety of the job. One day I can be roasting, the next I’m training half a dozen teenagers and trying to get them passionate about coffee, some days I’m tied to my desk and others I’m driving through the beautiful Cotswolds. It changes constantly and always keeps me on my toes.

When someone isn’t passionate about coffee and just wants to make money from it, I find it hard to encourage that and it can be disheartening.

It was an accident, but one I never regret.