Starting your own Neighbourhood Coffee Collective

Nevill Coffee Collective member Andy Capie

A group of coffee-loving families in the Nevill estate in Lewes have created a way to cut costs and packaging for their daily brew – and help support a local coffee roasting business in the process. Peter Heslip, co-founder of the Nevill Coffee Collective, explains more.

It all clicked into place when I was tasked with finding a local coffee supplier for my office. It was hard to believe the prices coffee roasters were offering for wholesale accounts. After sorting this out for work, my thoughts went to the price we paid for good coffee at home. Taking inspiration from the Lewes SUMA bulk-buy scheme, I approached a local coffee roasting business, Tiger Moth Roasters, who said they would be happy to sell to me in bulk at a certain price if I could place a minimum order.

The Nevill Coffee Collective was born: an informal network of 20 families who take turns getting monthly coffee to one another.

Key benefits

• Eliminate 1,000 plastic bags a year– In the six years we’ve been going, I reckon we have avoided consuming about 6,500 plastic bags (i.e. 5x200g plastic retail bags per kilo, 18kg a month average order)
• Support for a local roasting business – We kept the collective going through lockdown, giving Tiger Moth Roasters support at a time when cafés and offices had paused their orders
• Community connection – The 20 participating households have got to know each other a little better through occasional monthly contact. The tag-team rotating delivery system is a great excuse to interact in person. Saying ‘hi’ to lovely neighbours when doing the delivery rounds is a huge mood boost. The new bag of coffee each month on the doorstep is a delight.
• Amazing coffee at great prices – Wholesale pricing means that our members are paying less than what you’d pay for decent coffee at any supermarket. Being a volunteer collective, our family takes the lead on admin and handling the payments in/out and we charge no extra fee, so there is no mark-up. Our arrangement at present with Tiger Moth Roasters means we get to sample single origins and blends from around the world. This keeps the morning routine fresh and interesting.

 Set up your own collective – step by step

1. Find a gang of friends and neighbours – Our group started with six families in 2019 and grew via word of mouth over time. It remains stable at about 18-20 households a month which seems the right size – not too big to be a huge enterprise but a consistently large enough order for our roaster.
2. Admin – it is low tech by design – comms via email and 1-1 communication between neighbours (other online ‘community’ platforms trend into toxic…) We use a Google spreadsheet to keep an annual delivery rota and track orders. The 25^th of every month is the cut-off date to make changes.
3. Finance – Everyone makes a bank transfer to our personal account via standing order so we can make a single payment to settle the roaster’s invoice.
4. Packing up – One household takes a lead on packing up and the second family leads on house-to-house delivery. The roaster delivers to the pack house, or they collect from the roaster. Coffee arrives in large reusable tubs which get returned to the roastery. Your house is filled by the aroma of freshly roasted beans while you bag up orders into paper bags. Once a year we buy a box of paper bags from Nisbetts which can be returned to my family for reuse or recycled.
5. Delivery – The second household drops orders around the neighbourhood. Evenings seem to work best in terms of seeing some folks for a brief doorstep ‘hello’ (and sometimes not so short chat!). Energetic children can occasionally be persuaded to take the lead on this step.

Roasters Beatrice and Joe at Tiger Moth