Our story

Raw Bean is a small independent coffee company from Winchester. We started in 2012 on a market stall, selling proper coffee to people doing their Saturday shop, one cup at a time.

Before the stall, our founder Alex Cox was a supermarket buyer. Years on the retailer's side of the table taught him what it takes for a product to earn a place on a national shelf. It also taught him how rarely anyone took decaf seriously. Both turned out to matter.

The Bean Bag years

In 2017 we launched Bean Bags, the UK's first pyramid coffee bag: proper fresh ground coffee, individually enveloped, brews like a teabag. The trade press called it a market first. The Sun called it "bags of flavour". BBC Good Food put it in their trending list that June, and Waitrose put it on shelves nationally. We are still quietly pleased about all of that.

Then decaf took over

Somewhere along the way decaf stopped being our side line and became the main event. Every Raw Bean decaf uses the Swiss Water® Process, which removes 99.9% of the caffeine with nothing but water, temperature and time. No chemicals. Our decaf was on Waitrose shelves by 2016, Sainsbury's followed, and it has picked up Great Taste Awards along the way, most recently in 2024.

Where we are now

We are still a small Hampshire company, and that suits us. Small doesn't mean quiet though: since 2019 we have shipped enough coffee for more than 26 million cups, and these days over 3.3 million cups of our Swiss Water® decaf get poured every year. Not bad for a business that started on a market stall.

Most of our coffee now goes straight to people's doors: ground, whole bean, Bean Bags and Nespresso® compatible Perfect Pods, shipped across the UK with free delivery over £25. A lot of it arrives on subscription, which you can speed up, slow down, pause or cancel whenever you like.

That's the story so far. The next chapter is mostly about better decaf.