How I Got Here

Coffee, chaos, and the terrifying joy of doing it yourself

Twelve years ago, I graduated from Bath Spa with a mighty 2:2 in History. It was genuinely interesting, and left me qualified to do just about nothing. In the latter half of my university career, I discovered speciality coffee. Not coffee. Speciality coffee. There’s a difference, and if you’re nodding along, you know what I mean. If not, I’ll spare you. The short version is that I got absolutely and utterly obsessed.

After I systematically failed to secure a position on a PGCE, I migrated to Spain. Andalusia specifically, to teach English to a bunch of kids who didn’t really want to learn it. It was, to be honest, a bit of a doss (much like my university days, hence the 2:2). In between €1 jarras, I read and watched just about everything I could find on origin, processing, extraction, and steaming milk. By June 2015, I was back in the UK. The man with a plan. Fuck teaching, I was going to become a barista.

And so I did. I spent eighteen months behind the bar, bleary eyed early mornings and singed fingertips. Then, it was off to Origin Coffee, who took me on as a training manager, working with everyone from home enthusiasts to multi-site operators who wanted their staff to stop burning the milk. Training became wholesale, first covering the entirety of Europe, then focussing on London. By 2018, three years after my first barista shift, I’d come second in the UK Barista Championships—yes, it’s a thing, and yes it’s as silly as it sounds—and was coaching a friend to become a two-time world champion in coffee cocktails.

The weird and wonderful world of coffee competitions.

I had, throughout this brief stint of adulthood, been craving the pace of the West Country, although I was only twenty-five, so Bristol was rather more appealing than Bath. In 2019, I moved back West, joining Colonna Coffee in a wholesale role. On my first day, I sat down next to Peter, who five years earlier had made me my first proper coffee at Colonna & Small’s. I had, in some sense, come full circle. I had then, within six months, been made redundant. Cheers, Covid.

I sat in the car park, and I permitted myself a small cry. I went home and messaged everyone I knew. I had an abundance of free time, and I was ready to work. A month later, I was on some very quiet roads, in the middle of lockdown, driving to Holland to consult on a €50 million coffee contract for a Dutch supermarket chain.

It paid well. It was also, clearly, just employment in a different coat. I wanted to build something of my own, so I started trawling listings. There was a big red-brick building on the corner of Wells Road in Totterdown. Before I lost my job, I’d nearly bought a house there, and my main gripe was that there was nowhere to get a decent coffee nearby. I figured, there must be more like me around there, so I did it myself. Coffee, brunch, cocktails, and a few small plates in the evening. It was everything I loved, in one room in South Bristol.

I was fucking naïve. I learned on the job, and we spent our first three years on the brink of failure. But we persevered, and BANK has kept developing into what it is today. Last year, I opened my second restaurant, Lapin.

Six weeks after opening Lapin, I clearly felt like I had too much free time on my hands, so I started this Substack. The timing was nothing short of moronic. Since then—just under a year— 1,100 of you have come along for the ride. Six months ago, I started writing a monthly column for Country Living, and last month I joined Bristol Life as a columnist. There’s one more project I’m working on too, but I’ll have to save that one for another post.

The truth is, I write here because there are things that I want to say that don’t fit anywhere else. How restaurants actually work. What things cost. What gets left off the menu, and why. I am, first and foremost, a restaurateur who writes occasionally.

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