Fresh from celebrating their tenth birthday, 200 Degrees have quickly grown to be the biggest name in Nottingham coffee, spurring on a thriving scene that even birthed its own festival this October. We went down to their Meadow Lane roastery and HQ to speak to co-founder Rob Darby, and meet some of the team…
200 Degrees co-founders Rob and Tom (Vincent) “met at university here and never left”, and they soon fell in love with our city. “I've now lived in Nottingham an awful lot longer than I've lived anywhere else. So I feel like Nottingham’s been my home really forever.”
It’s a tale of humble beginnings, with each running cafes and bars and struggling to find decent coffee. “From having a roaster and a bag of beans in the corner of a room and not knowing how to work it to where we are today, it feels like we've achieved a lot,” and the coffee roasters now boast eighteen of their own shops across various cities, plus six barista schools, and hundreds of wholesale customers. Rob attests that “Nottingham’s one of the best cities for supporting independent business”.
Anyway, I’m not just here to chat, I want to get to the coffee. I’m toured around their roastery and introduced to what’s surely the biggest and fanciest roaster I’ve seen. Brand Ambassador Alex Spampinato puts it to work, and as we talk through the process of roasting the coffee, at (you guessed it) around 200 degrees, I watch the hard, green pellets slowly turn to that dark chocolatey brown we all know and love. “Each bean is unique, so it all requires tweaking,” Alex explains. “The old school way is throw them in, wait until it’s charcoal.” But this beast carefully calibrates to the needs of each 58 kilo load of beans.
Nottingham’s one of the best cities for supporting independent business
We finally grab a coffee, and I’m introduced to Charlotte Coore, Head of People and Culture, who says that working at 200 is all about creating a “home environment” and that they’re “constantly on the lookout for different ways to make the company as inclusive as possible”. Has it always been so protopian? Yes, she says, “At the end of day, it's the people that make 200. The coffee is, of course, the other aspect of it, and we literally do have the best coffee I’ve ever tried.”
On the adoption of coffee culture, especially by younger people, Rob says “in many ways it replaces the pub, and that’s not always a bad thing”. Addiction, and the trouble it can lead to, is a cause close to Rob and Tom’s heart, and they support local charities such as Double Impact (who run Cafe Sobar), rehabilitation centre The Priory, and Framework, who are often dealing with people facing addiction issues. More recently, they’ve decided to take on youth crime-tackling community centre and boxing club Switch Up, with a new line of coffee to raise funds for them coming soon.
At the end of day, it's the people that make 200. The coffee is, of course, the other aspect of it, and we literally do have the best coffee I’ve ever tried
Rob feels that “there's a story behind everyone who ends up in any kind of cycle of addiction, and there are reasons why a child would need to engage with Switch Up’s services”, and enthuses that if there’s “anything we can do to support that individual to escape, whatever the reason they’re finding times a bit tougher, we will. I feel it's our duty as a local business to do our best to help”.
They’ve also just launched a brand new line of fully recyclable packaging, including the new Switch Up coffee pods made from aluminium. But what about the future? “We'll keep growing, we'll keep innovating. We will try and stay fresh. We won't try to grow too fast. You know, we're not in a hurry.” They also recently reached the milestone of employing - yep - 200 people, but they’ve no plans to stop there. “We'll keep trying to hire great people, and hopefully give Nottingham a business to be proud of.”
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