Cart Life

Running a mobile coffee wagon is many people’s dream, but what is the reality? Caffeine abandoned its heated office and comfortable chair for three days to find out

- Leanne Bracey

Since the launch of Caffeine, we’ve fielded emails and phone calls from people asking for advice about opening a coffee business. Some of those queries have been specifically about operating coffee carts. It seems a lot of people have romantic notions of serving sleepy commuters on crisp early mornings and getting home in time for lunch. Or are trying to work around increasing high street rents.

But what is working on a coffee cart really like? In the interests of journalistic integrity, we decided to find out for ourselves, working with Lukaz and Mike on the Flat Cap coffee carts in London’s Borough Market.

WAKE-UP CALL

A 5am alarm isn’t a normal part of our daily routine – that’s usually reserved for early holiday flights and being woken by the kids on Christmas Day – but for the next few days, we’ll be joining the surprisingly large number of workers who are up and out of their houses at this ungodly hour. It seems if you want a career in mobile coffee service, you had better get used to early mornings.

We don’t actually get our (packed) train until 6.30am, but people who operate coffee carts at or near train stations, like Daniel from Blueprint Coffee in Whitstable, need to be there even earlier. “I set up at 5.30am and finish at 9am or 10am in summer,” he says. “We serve a couple of hundred drinks across three hours, so it’s very busy.” El Cerrato, manager of the Brighton station cart for Small Batch Coffee Roasters, agrees. “Brighton station is busy from 6am when we open through to 2pm when we close, so the time flies. Before you get cold or bored, you’re normally packing down and finishing.”