Coffee with a story behind it.
Meade’s began around a table in our rural Essex village with a simple thought:
Why should you have to live in a big town or city to enjoy great coffee and really good sweet treats? There are plenty of coffee shops out there, but we wanted to create something different. Something with personality, something memorable and something that felt unmistakably Meade’s.
We’re Jo and Meade, a mother and daughter team from Essex. We wanted to create something of our own, build it together and bring a little bit of what we felt our local area was missing to the communities around us.
That conversation became Meade’s Coffee & Dessert Bar.
Then came Betsy.
And when we say we built our business ourselves, we really mean it. We stripped the van back and rebuilt her with our own hands, turning an empty shell into the Coffee & Dessert Bar we could already see so clearly in our heads.
We had a vision from the very beginning.
Flowers. Mockingbirds. Beautiful blue and white Royal Doulton-inspired details.
We wanted people to walk up to Betsy, stop for a second and think:
Wow.
We never wanted to be just another catering van. We wanted Betsy to feel special. Somewhere warm, welcoming and unmistakably Meade’s. Somewhere you could grab a coffee and a treat and have a little moment in the middle of an otherwise ordinary day.
Since then, Betsy has taken us across Essex, Kent, Hertfordshire and London, serving at village events, markets, festivals, sports clubs, corporate events, community days and everything in between.
And somewhere along that journey, we realised just how important coffee had become to our story.
We have served thousands upon thousands of cups of coffee, and when you make that many, you start to understand something:
Coffee means something different to everyone.
For one person it’s the lifeline that starts the morning.
For someone else it’s a warm hug in a cup.
It might be the coffee you grab before the school run, the one that gets you through a packed afternoon, the cup you share while catching up with someone you haven’t seen for far too long, or those precious ten minutes when you finally stop and wonder:
Where did those hours go?
The right coffee can make a difference to your day.
And when someone comes to us at an event, there is one thing we always want them to feel:
We’ve got you.
Coffee somehow tastes better when somebody else has made it for you.
We want every cup we hand over to feel as though it has been made with care and with that person in mind. And time after time, customers take that first sip and tell us:
“That’s a lovely coffee.”
When you’ve heard that thousands of times, you start thinking...
Why should people only be able to enjoy Meade’s Coffee when Betsy happens to be nearby?
And that is where the next chapter of our story begins.
Meade’s Coffee
We wanted to create a range of coffees inspired by the different moments in your day, because we know there isn’t just one kind of “coffee moment”.
There’s Intentions, for the start of the day when you decide what you want from the hours ahead.
There’s Momentum, for when intention needs to become action.
Abundance, for making space for more of the good stuff.
Gratitude, for that later-day pause when you can stop, reflect and appreciate how far you’ve come.
And Meditate, our decaf, for when you want the ritual and the moment without the rush.
The exact coffees, beans and blends will continue to be chosen with the same philosophy that has shaped Meade’s from the beginning:
great coffee that makes a difference to your day.
We’re not here to make coffee complicated.
We want to make coffee that you look forward to. Coffee that fits into real life. Coffee that becomes part of your routine, your quiet moments, your busy moments and everything in between.
Because Meade’s has never really just been about coffee or desserts.
It’s about how we make people feel.
From the van we rebuilt ourselves, to the flowers and mockingbirds, to the thousands of coffees we’ve served across the South East, everything has been created with care, personality and a little bit of that original kitchen-table dream.
Now we get to share the next part of it with you.
From our family, to your cup.