Cooper’s Coffee, one of the most distinctive suppliers in the beverage trade, has gained Investors In People status. The IIP standard, which confirms the positive ways in which staff are managed and involved in business activity, was awarded by the Yorkshire and Humberside Recognition Panel.
The report described Cooper’s as ‘a small business with a big company philosophy’, praising the firm for continuously striving to improve quality and service standards - and Cooper’s itself responded by saying that it now has ambitions to become ‘the best coffee company in the UK’.
Cooper’s was established by Jaqui and David Cooper twenty years ago. Even in a trade full of characters and opinions, Cooper’s has rarely been out of the news for what it has said and done.
It pioneered the concept of precise temperature-measurement in espresso machines (something which later become a real hot potato in the beverage industry), it announced the UK’s largest barista-training facility outside London, it became a driving force in the world barista championships with David Cooper one of the earliest accredited Britons as a world judge, and it created the most expensive espresso blend in the country as part of a promotional charity stunt.
Its most recent contract win has been one of Yorkshire’s landmark pubs, the Bull at Broughton near Skipton. The Bull, which has been taken over by Nigel Haworth of BBC’s Great British Menu as a Ribble Valley inn, has taken on the Dalla Corte espresso machine, the one at the heart of the ‘intelligent’ temperature-control issue.
Coopers has a current turnover of around £2.4 million.
By Ian Boughton