Why I went from a top job making Ribena and Lucozade to roasting coffee in my outhouse

Having been an instant coffee drinker for many years at home in Yorkshire, his overseas trips across Europe, particularly to Italy and France, had opened his eyes – and his taste buds - to the real thing.

As he spent more time in Europe, working for companies including Coca Cola and GSK, responsible for manufacturing Ribena and Lucozade, he realised that coffee was simply part of life there.

“Coffee was everywhere, particularly in Italy and France,” says Paul. “It was a must in the workplace and after all meals and it seemed to create a buzz and a vibe of its own. It was a whole different drink from the coffee I knew.”

He soon became fascinated not just by the taste of different coffees, which he sampled “via the cafetiere route” at first, but also by becoming aware of the process of how they were created.

And now, almost two years after he retired, Paul, 62, is the creator of his own blends of Shannon Coffee, which he sells at Hebden Bridge market twice a week on Thursdays and Sundays, on-line and in two local farm shops and one delicatessen.

“I can hardly believe it myself,” says Paul, at home in Triangle, near Halifax, overlooking the old wooden outhouse where he first experimented with roasting coffee beans. “When I first started, it was just a hobby and then when I retired I wanted to fill my time and decided to try to make and sell the real thing.”

The idea had been planted in his mind years before, not only by his trips abroad, but once, when as a consultant, he was asked to visit Masteroast, a coffee factory in Peterborough. “I’ll never forget the smell of the coffee beans,” he says. “But then I was fascinated by the science – the pace from green beans to roast beans in 20 minutes and the science behind it. There was the simplicity of the machines yet the complexity of the product.”

He began to visit the annual London Coffee Festival, held every year at The Truman Brewery in Brick Lane and which last year attracted more than 22,000 people, and always enjoyed a coffee from the Caravan King’s Cross, close to the station, which roasts its own. In 2012 he bought his first roaster, so he could experiment. “At that stage it was just for fun,” he said. But soon, it became a little more than a hobby as he began to spend more time roasting beans. He even had to move from the outhouse to his slightly larger 2.5 metre square shed, whose walls are now hung with hessian sacks which were once filled with coffee beans from Brazil, Costa Rica, India. On the outside a sign declares “Halifax Town” relating to Paul’s lifelong support of The Shaymen, otherwise known as National League side FC Halifax Town.

“I thought that I could develop something, make great coffee available to everybody. There is some snobbery around coffee – some people want to turn coffee into wine – but people like what they like and that’s all that matters.”

And now, just over 10 years since he began trialling in his outhouse, Paul is busy selling his four brands of coffee – plus one decaffeinated – all called after local places which have a special meaning for Halifax-born Paul.

“I looked at a map of Calderdale and decided on these four names – Hebden, Field House, Shibden and Triangle,” he explains. “We spend a lot of time in Hebden Bridge, Field House is where we live and I played cricket at Triangle…and we won everything. I chose Shibden because it has a really strong industrial feel to it.”

When it came to naming the brand, a colleague suggested he should go for something ‘funky.’ “But I don’t look like funky,” laughs Paul. “I look like Shannon and so in the end we decided on that.”

His wife Gill, an administrator, who surprisingly does not drink coffee, designed the packaging, which is 100 per cent recyclable, and shows her drawing of the huge sycamore tree outside their home, which dwarfs Paul’s shed. Gill and his daughter Katie, helped to design his market stall and Katie and her husband Joe designed the website and handle Shannon Coffee’s social media.

“I had always planned to just sell on-line until a friend asked me why I didn’t take a stall at the market,” he says. “The first few times I was really self-conscious, like a fish out of water – while I was comfortable walking across any shop floor I didn’t feel happy about standing behind a market stall. I felt a bit like Del Boy, it was really strange. But when I sold my first bag, I was so excited. And the other stall holders were really helpful and supportive. Now I absolutely love it and most of all I’ve met some lovely people who have become regular customers.”

They include coffee lovers who first met Paul at Hebden Bridge market but live as far afield as Birmingham, Hull, Blackpool and Whitley Bay and have now become regular on-line customers. His success meant he reached a tipping point where the shed became too small for the quantities he needed so he now mainly uses a bigger roaster owned by a friend in nearby Brighouse.

But the shed is still where Paul is about to experiment with some new blends so he can offer his customers a “coffee of the month”, an idea he had to tempt people to try something new. Customers receive their orders direct from Paul who bags and labels the coffee in his kitchen and posts them out via Royal Mail.

His latest plan is to offer coffee mugs, which carry the same image of the sycamore tree. “At the moment my wife is painting the mugs by hand and we have given a few as gifts,” says Paul. “But hopefully we can develop that to produce more.”

www.shannoncoffee.co.uk/