Everything you need to write about Raw Bean

Decaf, done properly

Raw Bean was one of the first UK brands to bring the chemical-free Swiss Water® Process decaf to supermarket shelves, and it is still one of the country's biggest names in it. The process removes 99.9% of the caffeine using nothing but water, temperature and time, so there are no chemicals and very little flavour lost. It is the decaf for people who thought they had given up on decaf: good enough for after dinner, gentle enough for anyone cutting down.

Facts: chemical-free Swiss Water® Process, 99.9% caffeine removed · on Waitrose shelves since 2016, Sainsbury's followed · Great Taste Award winner, most recently 2025 · over 3.3 million cups poured a year · in 2018, Nielsen ranked Raw Bean the 3rd biggest decaf filter brand in UK retail.

Wellness / sleep angle: 62% of Brits already avoid regular coffee later in the day (Lavazza UK research, 2025), and The Sleep Charity's advice is to stop caffeine 8 hours before bed. Nobody tells them what to do with the after-dinner cup that's left behind. That's your story: the 9pm coffee was never really about the caffeine. It was about sitting down with a proper cup. Swiss Water® decaf keeps the ritual and drops the caffeine, and our Library articles on caffeine and sleep carry the sources, so the science in your piece arrives already checked.

Health / label-reader angle: only 20% of coffee drinkers can tell you how the caffeine comes out of decaf, and 11% quietly suspect the process is unsafe (both Lavazza UK). For a lot of cheap decaf the honest answer is a chemical solvent, which is exactly the sort of thing label readers go hunting for. Swiss Water® is the version you can explain in one sentence of print: water, temperature and time, nothing else, 99.9% of the caffeine gone. For the 46% of consumers who research what's on a label (YouGov, 2026), that one sentence is the whole pitch.

Fitness / training angle: caffeine and training have a complicated relationship: useful before a session, unhelpful at 9pm before an early start. Swiss Water® decaf keeps the evening coffee without the caffeine, and our Library pieces on cutting down caffeine for a training reset and on coffee after 3pm carry the sources, so the sports-science part of your piece arrives pre-checked.

Lift this: "a decaf that actually tastes like coffee."

Bean Bags, the UK's first pyramid coffee bag

In 2017 Raw Bean launched Bean Bags, the UK's first pyramid coffee bag: proper fresh ground coffee, individually enveloped, that brews like a teabag. No machine, no mess, no filter papers. The trade press called it a market first, The Sun called it "bags of flavour", and BBC Good Food put it in their trending list.

Facts: UK market-first pyramid coffee bag (2017) · individually wrapped, brews in the cup · the decaf Bean Bags were named a best decaf by BBC Countryfile in 2025.

Cycling angle: for club cyclists the cafe stop is the ride. GCN calls coffee "a staple part of most cyclists' ritual", and Cycling UK counts over 70,000 members across roughly 1,000 local groups. A Bean Bag weighs nothing in a jersey pocket and brews a proper 12g cup anywhere with hot water: the club hut, the campsite, the mate's kitchen with a broken cafetiere and a suspicious jar of instant.

Fitness / running angle: read any running forum and the pre-run coffee is planned with an engineer's precision: what time, how long before the start, what it does to the stomach mid-race. The ritual matters and it travels badly: race-morning hotels, parkrun car parks, a friend's spare room. A Bean Bag keeps the routine intact anywhere there's a kettle, and the decaf version means the evening cup after a hard session doesn't cost you the night's sleep.

Office / desk angle: one in four cups of UK coffee is drunk at work or while studying (British Coffee Association / CEBR). Meanwhile Reddit's verdict on the office machine is "55p and not even that great", and the veterans have given up and started bringing a thermos from home. A box of Bean Bags in a desk drawer beats both. Proper ground coffee, individually wrapped, and the only equipment involved is the kettle everyone was already fighting over.

Lift this: "coffee that brews like a teabag, with none of the mess."

Whole bean, including 1kg for bean-to-cup

As more UK homes and offices trade pods for bean-to-cup machines, Raw Bean offers speciality whole bean by the kilo, decaf and caffeinated. The beans have form with the judges: the South American Specialty blend holds a Great Taste star (2025), and the Swiss Water® Definitely Decaf single origins took four Great Taste stars in 2024. A considered alternative to the supermarket Italian staples for anyone getting fussier about what goes in the hopper.

Facts: whole bean available up to 1kg · South American Specialty beans, Great Taste 1-star 2025 · Definitely Decaf singles, 4 x Great Taste 1-star 2024 (Brazilian Oberon, Peruvian Fairtrade Organic, Ethiopian Sidamo, original Colombian) · Swiss Water® decaf whole bean for bean-to-cup · roasted in the UK.

Office / trend angle: as more UK homes and offices trade the pod machine for bean-to-cup, the machine turns out to be only half the purchase. Feed a machine that cost hundreds on tired supermarket beans and it will grind them beautifully, and make you tired coffee, beautifully. The hopper is the cheapest upgrade in the building: a speciality kilo, caffeinated or Swiss Water® decaf, from an independent with the award history to settle the "which beans" question before it starts.

Wellness angle: the second-hopper move: caffeinated in the morning, Swiss Water® decaf after lunch, so the 3pm cup stops being a decision anyone has to think about. Cheap to do, strangely rare, and a neat workplace-wellbeing piece for the price of a kilo of beans.

Lift this: "Speciality beans for the bean-to-cup switch."

Perfect Pods, Nespresso® compatible

Raw Bean's Perfect Pods are Nespresso® compatible, including a Swiss Water® decaf, so pod drinkers get Raw Bean coffee without changing machine. The judges rate them too: the Definitely Decaf pods hold a 2-star Great Taste Award (2025), and the Breakfast Blend and Deliciously Dark pods have each won Great Taste stars of their own.

Facts: Nespresso® compatible pods · Definitely Decaf pods, Great Taste 2-star 2025 and 1-star 2019 · Breakfast Blend pods, Great Taste 1-star 2019 · Deliciously Dark pods, Great Taste 1-star 2021 and 2022 · decaf pods use the Swiss Water® Process.

Office / value angle: the easy way into Raw Bean for a pod household or a shared machine: no new kit, no retraining, and the value maths is on our side. A box of ten is £3.50 to £4.00, which is 35p to 40p a pod. That's a Great Taste 2-star decaf for the money you'd hand over for an everyday Nespresso® original capsule.

Sustainability angle: pod drinkers online are cross, and fairly so: "compostable" capsules that arrive as plastic, recyclable claims with fine print, third-party pods that taste of their own packaging. One r/ZeroWaste verdict on a mislabelled pod order: "That's not greenwashing. That's fraud." Our answer is boring on purpose. Perfect Pods are 100% aluminium, the same material and format as an original espresso capsule, so the machine treats them like one: pierces cleanly, extracts properly, no plastic anywhere near your coffee. And recycling is a kitchen job, not an errand. Press the grounds out (the £12.49 Upress on our site makes short work of it), rinse, and the pod is ready for the recycling bin. No labels to print, no collection to book.

Lift this: "the decaf pod with a 2-star Great Taste Award."

Single origins with a track record

Raw Bean's single origins have been picked out by the national press for years. The Independent called our Mexican Terruno Nayarita "deeply satisfying, with a rich and velvety flavour" in their 11 best single origins (2015), and the Evening Standard chose our Mexican Finca Aurora in their single origin roundup (2017).

Facts: traceable single origins · Independent best single origin pick (2015) · Evening Standard pick (2017).

Wellness angle: decaf drinkers get the traceable stuff too. All four of our 2024 Great Taste stars went to Swiss Water® decaf single origins. If your piece argues that decaf finally deserves to be taken seriously, that's your evidence paragraph.

Lift this: "deeply satisfying, with a rich and velvety flavour" (The Independent).

Sustainability, nuance included

Raw Bean would rather be straight than greenwash. The coffee is sourced through traceable supply chains from growers who take conservation seriously, like the award-winning Monte Sion Estate in El Salvador, and roasted on an emission-controlled roaster that cuts roasting emissions by around 90% and recycles most of its own heat. The Bean Bags are plant-based PLA, made from corn and sealed with an ultrasonic weld, no glue. They are industrially compostable rather than home compostable, and Raw Bean will not call them plastic-free, because they are not.

Facts: 227g and 1kg bags recyclable at larger supermarkets (since 2021) · Bean Bags plant-based PLA, industrially compostable · Perfect Pods 100% recyclable aluminium · emission-controlled roasting (around 90% lower emissions, 95-97% heat recycled) · 5p from every Waitrose and Sainsbury's filter bag donated to FareShare · supports World Coffee Research · supplies Waitrose Unpacked refill trials.

Eco / ethics angle: readers have learned to treat "sustainable" on a coffee pack as marketing noise, and honestly, the forums agree with them. So the nuance is the story. We publish our own fine print: plant-based, not plastic-free; industrially compostable, not home. 56% of consumers say they want transparency from brands (YouGov, 2026). A company volunteering its own caveats is rarer than it should be, and it's the one green story that survives the comments section.

Lift this: "We would rather tell you the truth than tick a marketing box."