lets get introduced.
In a world where the word 'good' can often feel diluted, The Good Coffee Cartel is here to redefine it. One caffeinated cup of good at a time.
Based in Glasgow’s Kinning Park, this Scottish roastery has become internationally recognised not just for its iconic reusable coffee cans, but for building a business around one simple principle: GOOD. Good coffee. Good products. Good people. Good impact.
Founded by Todd Whiteford and Courtney Brennan, they’re friends and former café colleagues who set out to do things a wee bit differently. The Good Coffee Cartel began as an idea sketched out over a couple pints. What followed was a big leap - scraping savings, taking out a loan, and transforming a garage into one of the country’s most progressive coffee roasteries. Since opening in 2017, they’ve been quietly (and not so quietly) shaping a new future for coffee in Glasgow and beyond.
At the heart of their business is a deep respect for everyone in the coffee chain. From farmers to baristas, and a relentless drive to innovate without compromise. Their zero-waste distribution model, reusable cup system, and environmentally conscious sourcing are just the tip of the coffee bean. Whether it’s the way they roast or the way they treat their team of ‘coffee ninjas’, everything the Cartel does is guided by purpose and a pinch of mischief for good measure.
There’s a shared attitude between Rapscallion and The Good Coffee Cartel that built us a robust and affinitive relationship with each other, and a no brainer to get them involved in this series. A bit of cheek, a whole lot of care, and a refusal to do things the boring way. Like us, they’ve carved out their own lane. Adding a bit of spice, pizazz and subversion to our sometimes stagnant industries, and staying true to voice, values and flavour. Disruption with purpose and intent. Innovators doing tasty things with good at the heart of it?!
In this episode of the Flavour Series, we dive into the ethos, evolution, and energy behind The Good Coffee Cartel. An example of what happens when good people make good decisions in pursuit of doing good.
We’ll hand the microphone over to Todd, who’ll mention the word good just a few more times for you all:
PT.1
Tell Us About Yourself?
I got into coffee while I was studying, basically as a way to pay for beer! I had finished uni, had a short stint in a 9-5 office job, being nervous every day, just passing time until Friday rolled around, dreading Sundays and so on and then decided to go back and study for another year. I got a job in Tinderbox in Glasgow which - in 2007 - was basically the only decent coffee place in town. I found I really enjoyed the process of it and I felt like, as a starting place, I learned loads. I also really liked the customer service aspect: the idea of becoming built into somebody’s daily routine, something they look forward to, or maybe even sometimes the only nice bit of someone’s day which made me feel like it was a really important part of the experience to focus on. It was also hard, relentless work in a really busy place so the days kind of flew in.
I went travelling (boke) in 2010 and ended up seeing some coffee farms and processing in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama & Colombia which felt like another piece of the puzzle in terms of how the whole industry fits together. I ran out of money and flew to New Zealand to stay with my cousin and try to refill the bank by working in coffee for a bit. The culture there around coffee and hospitality in general felt way ahead of what was happening in Glasgow at the time so I learned some new skills and found more appreciation for the whole “coffee experience” (again, boke!) in general.
I returned to Glasgow a year later and, even though coffee still wasn’t something I thought could be a career, it was a good way to make some quick money when I came back. I found work with a start up coffee shop, which then became a roastery.
Over a period of 6 years I learned how to roast, gain some management skills, a bit of sales experience and ended up with what I felt was a pretty good overview of how a coffee business can work.
I hired my now business partner, Courtney, as head roaster and over time we realised we were quite well aligned in terms of ideas, ambitions and also a feeling that possibly we were reaching our current ceiling where we were.
Went for a beer, decided to get a couple of start-up loans, signed the lease on a dusty old garage in Kinning Park, bought a roaster and then jumped right in. 8 years later here we are!
Opening the Cartel felt like a real milestone as far as working towards something and then making it happen. I’m proud of what we’re doing with The Cartel, and what we’re still going to do. We’re embedded into a lot of people’s daily routines in a positive way.
We’re creating a good product, we’re trying to keep innovating to reduce our packaging and change habits around refilling - definitely when it comes to packaging I feel like we took a big gamble introducing refillables so early on (more expensive to produce, relies a lot on changing habits without alienating customers etc), but now when I look around and see so many of our peers in the industry adopting the same ideas I take confidence in that. We were f***ing right, Courtney!
PT.2
Can You Tell Us About Your Brand In A Nutshell?
We are a specialty coffee roastery. That means we source and roast the highest scoring 1% of coffee grown globally. We roast to showcase the characteristics of the individual origin countries and really we exist to make the relationship between coffee producers at origin and our regular customers drinking their flat whites one that is easily understandable.
PT.3
What Sets You Apart?
Depends. What sets us apart from the chains? F***ing everything mate: more responsible sourcing, better wages, higher quality product, better equipment, better branding, better value for money, locally sourced baked goods….you name it, the independents do it better.
What sets us apart from our peers in the industry? That’s a more challenging one to answer. There are a lot of good speciality coffee roasters in Scotland, and with that we’re all aligned in our views around sourcing and provenance. So it really comes down to individual opinions - in the same way that you’d have a favourite film or a favourite band. We’re all doing a similar thing, it’s just what you prefer yourself innit? Try them all and then make your decision!
PT.4
Why Rapscallion?
Rapscallion was the first non-coffee product that we ever stocked, way back in the day of the stubby cans. In many ways it helped us set out the stall around what the rest of our non-coffee offering should be: those products would also have to fall into that ethos - locally sourced, high quality ingredients and a degree of craft and skill in the process.
Essentially we thought that Rapscallion were doing with juices what we were doing with coffee: high quality, emphasis on flavour with a tongue-in-cheek approach to how we were getting people to drink it.
I’d serve Rapscallion by itself, over ice. Let the flavours speak for themselves. If I’m pairing it with anything, don’t overlook a shot of bourbon (yer Bulleits, yer Woodford Reserves), with a full can of Dry Lime and if you’re really feeling like you’re the juiciest boy in the bar and even a slice of lime with it. Nice bit of business, that.
PT.5
Are Habits Changing? Then vs Now?
The biggest habit change we’ve seen is in how people perceive coffee packaging. We’ve definitely seen habits change as far as refilling goes: we’re rapidly approaching 150 refills of 200g beans every week. When you eke that out over the course of a year it feels significant. We’re saving over 7500 bits of single-use packaging annually just for our in store retail offering. Add into that our reusable wholesale packaging and it feels (to us at least) like meaningful impact. We’ll be close to saving 20,000 bits of single use packaging for this year.
Part of getting to that point was being brave and not offering an alternative (essentially having a bit of a “you can use our reusable packaging, and if you don’t like it you’re welcome to buy your coffee elsewhere”). Back that up with a very good product that people want and it makes it hard to say no to it.
What we’ve seen is that while everyone seems clocked onto the impact of climate change, not everyone is prepared to make the small efforts to reduce their own impact. At a time when it feels like Western governments are more focused on various other important issues, conflict etc then of course the public can feel jaded and disillusioned about the impact of their individual actions. So we kind of just gave that a little push in the right direction: make the whole product undeniable and build-in the refillable ethos (every 8th refill is free) to try and change habits that way. A series of small changes hopefully leading to a larger meaningful one.
PT.6
What's Next For You? Anything Exciting You Can Reveal, Anything You're Excited About?
At this point the way the business is growing, all arrows point towards moving the roastery to a bigger venue. We’d love to have a dedicated space for the roastery to ‘stretch it’s legs’, but still be accessible to the public and build out an interesting offering for as many people as we can.
That decision will be made over the next 6-12 months I reckon, and then after that we move down the list: keep evolving the packaging, keep trying to improve the customer experience in store, origin trips, develop staff, tell more of our story online, engage more customers. Endless lists.
