Local coffee van owner, Joe, situated in City Stadium in Heaton, explains how his mobile coffee business started up, and shares the benefits that being self-employed has brought him.
Find the Taylor-Made Coffee van at Heaton City Stadium park, Monday to Friday from 9am to around 3pm, and at the Sunday Quayside markets.
Sourced from Google Maps
Joe, from Tyne valley, has worked in hospitality since being in school and worked as a freelance musician alongside a part-time job. After the pandemic, he returned to working minimum wage hospitality jobs and found he wanted to start earning more money, as we all do, whilst doing something that he is passionate about.
Making coffee was something he enjoyed from hospitality, and a mobile coffee van was something he could start up himself on a ‘short budget’.
Joe explains his use of personalised coffee beans, which he buys from smaller batches, “a lot of commercial coffee is large batch roasted,” meaning those beans are roasted for a longer time. Joe states that by buying smaller batch roasted beans, his coffee has a ‘cleaner taste’ and the beans them selves are generally a bit cheaper, therefore he can sell his drinks for cheaper too, and Joe calls it a, “good all rounder.”
Source: Jolie Brennan
Joe’s coffee machine runs from the back of his van, which has double doors that open up with menus on the inside. Here he has fridges and a coffee machine alongside a bean grinder. Joe says it, “took a lot of planning to put the coffee van together,” but his previous experience helping other peoples market stalls, so he wasn’t totally new to building things, and spent a while measuring out specific dimensions out of cardboard in his living room beforehand.
Mobile coffee suppliers have grown in popularity for business owners over the past few years following covid and the current state of the cost of living crisis, freelance coffee makers might be ahead of the game when it comes to business.
Joe explains how running his business alone allows him to make a decent amount of money due to the lack of pressure of having to make sure you can pay employee wages and property fees, and once you start earning a lot of money when owning cafes and other businesses alike, it becomes a bigger expense than running his coffee van by itself.
The quayside markets bring in a big chunk of income for his business, as he makes from, “100 to 200,” coffees in a day which he says, “keeps me going quite nicely.”
Source: Jolie Brennan
Joe has a lease for trading in Heaton city stadium, which means only he can sell in that specific area. This is common in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, with other business owners having similar leases for other parks within the area.
Coffee vans are especially popular in student and business dominated areas, for people walking to work or university, a quick stop along their usual route is sometimes more convenient than heading into commercial zones for a coffee.
Joe hopes to deliver a ‘traditional style’ of coffee, by saying he hopes he can sell, “coffee that tastes like coffee,” so that serving a caramel latte for example, it can, “taste of both coffee and caramel rather than sweet milk.”
You can find Taylor-Made Coffee on Instagram here
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