Decadent Decaf Turns 10 Years Old

We've hit 10 years old! So, how did it come to pass that we created Decadent Decaf?

Well, here's our origin story!

It all started in 2012 with Guy and Laura, who had worked together for many years at a coffee importing company importing rare coffees including the famous Jamaica Blue Mountain, Hawaii Kona and Panama Geisha.

All that cupping and evaluating coffees took their toll on Guy's body and he started reacting badly to caffeine - not great news for a coffee importer!

So, he started trying all the decafs out there and found them to mostly be bad, cheap or stale - and often all three...

Most of the great decafs were to be found in the USA, using the Swiss Water Decaf Process, and Swiss Water Decaf was rather unheard of and not really available in Europe at that time.

So, Laura and Guy proposed launching a decaf coffee brand, within the coffee importing company itself, and the first (very bad) website was launched in May 2014.

But, who was to roast the decaf?

Guy and Laura were green (raw) coffee experts, but had no experience of roasting... Step forward, Richard and Greg Jansz of Coffee Compass in Littlehampton in West Sussex who Guy & Laura had worked with for many years supplying Jamaica Blue Mountain to them.

Richard and Greg, a father and son team, had been expertly roasting speciality coffee since the 1990s in West Sussex and were enthusiastic about the new project and helped source the Swiss Water Decaf coffees for Decadent Decaf - no mean feat back then.

In 2015, they agreed to do a sort of "management buyout" of the Decadent Decaf brand and, together with Richard and Greg, they created their own Decadent Decaf Coffee Company owned by Guy, Richard, Laura and Greg - and that partnership continues to this day.

So, when you buy from Decadent Decaf, it's a personal experience and from a source of passion to get decaf right, straight from the roastery a mile from the sea - as fresh as it gets.

Just because we have established ourselves, doesn’t mean we are resting on our laurels. We're continuing to launch new decafs and trying out new and exciting guest coffees to keep things interesting for our "Decadent Decaf Die Hards" - you know who you are.

But, as we said in the beginning of this newsletter: we wouldn't be able to do it without you, so to all our customers - old and new - thank you.

And also please spread the word - we're still a very small company with big aspirations - and word of mouth is the best form of recommendation!

We toast with a cup of decaf to the next 10 years!

Guy, Laura, Greg & Richard