RAVE Coffee: How a simple company philosophy supports specialty and cold coffee
Cold Coffee Success Stories is a series that focuses on pioneering companies in the cold coffee space and their unique stories. This week, we feature RAVE Coffee, a down-to-earth, Cotswolds-based British specialty coffee company with a simple mission: serve its customers the best coffee they’ve ever had.
Cirencester is an English market town that dates back to 150 AD when the area was under Roman rule. It is a gateway to the Cotswolds, a range of rolling green hills that extend from the upstream meadows of the River Thames to the Severn Valley escarpment and Vale of Evesham.
It is littered with small, golden Cotswold-stone villages, babbling chalk streams, and rich farmland – a quintessentially Dickensian area of Britain and perhaps not where you’d expect to find world-class specialty coffee.
RAVE has something to say about that. In 2011, couple Rob and Vicki Hodge opened their doors, marking the beginning of a journey that would see a small Cirencester coffee roaster become a leading voice in British coffee culture.
Taking specialty coffee culture further afield
2023 was the first year that British coffee consumption outstripped tea drinking: coffee sales in the UK are now almost double that of tea – 533 million coffee bags sold, vs 287 million packs of tea bags.
Statista reports that over 40% of British households own a coffee maker, a statistic buoyed by the home brewing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, 59% of Britons regularly drink tea, but 63% regularly drink coffee – over 95 million cups per day, in fact.
RAVE was founded during the Third Wave coffee revolution, a period in which coffee culture and customers began to emphasise craft, localness, and quality more than Second Wave foci like brand name, flavoured beverages, and supermarket aisles.
For businesses like RAVE, the Third Wave was instrumental in the development of a market seeking independent and artisanal coffee options. In areas of the United Kingdom where big international chains had not yet appeared, a gap opened for high-quality coffee with a local and welcoming feel.
However, while coffee from Starbucks, Costa, or other branded chains has long been a part of urban life, companies like RAVE faced the challenge of building a coffee culture while simultaneously building their businesses.
Luckily, Cirencester and much of the greater Cotswolds area have many of the tenets of specialty coffee built into their broader culture. A strong local agricultural tradition, tight-knit communities, and pervasive eco-consciousness and connectedness to the land have no doubt served Rave well in their craft coffee journey.
In a November 2024 press release, founders Rob and Vicki said, “RAVE Coffee delivers great coffee, made simple, to consumers across the UK. We’re committed to a better coffee experience for all, cutting through the noise of in-crowds and unnecessary jargon. RAVE Coffee puts taste, quality, and sustainability above all else.”
Defining quality and engaging consumers
As mentioned, coffee culture is now firmly entrenched in British consciousness. In 2025, the UK is far beyond international brand-laden supermarket coffee aisles or simple independent cafés. Today, specialty coffee is widespread, and businesses like RAVE have played a vital role in spreading the word.
Indeed, in 2011 specialty coffee meant flat whites and single origins. Almost fifteen years later, the same term relates to so much more, such as cold brew coffee, rare coffee, VR coffee experiences, and single origin taster packs – all on the menu at RAVE.
“It’s probably worth dropping into the conversation that we continuously strive to source the best quality raw product possible,” RAVE Coffee states.
“Looking in all sorts of directions globally, we aim to source coffee that scores 82 points or above on the SCA scale for the quality of our blends and 84+ for our single origin coffees as a minimum starting point.
“In a nutshell, we simply want to serve you the best coffee you’ve ever had.”
Quality is definitive to specialty coffee, and factors like provenance, region, sustainability, and tasting notes combine to increase a bean’s score. In 2024, RAVE Coffee ran its Now That’s What I Call Coffee campaign to directly involve its consumers in the development of a new coffee blend called Brew-Tang Clan.
In a press release, the company said: “After five rounds of voting, RAVE Coffee has announced the results of its Now That’s What I Call Coffee 2024 poll, with the winning Brew Tang Clan blend now available to buy. Created to give customers a say in the product development process and to help track changing tastes among coffee lovers, the vote offered up nine coffees from three growing regions to choose from.”
“Over the course of five days, the coffee-loving public was called upon to vote for coffee growing regions, specific varieties with tasting notes, level of roast and finally, the name of the new blend. The result is Brew-Tang Clan 2024, a 60/40 blend of fruity coffee beans from the Vunga washing station in Rwanda and a chocolatey Guatemalan coffee from Santa Rosa.
“These two distinct styles of speciality coffee offer up complex fruit flavours, with the medium/dark roasting profile presenting a sweet dried fruit quality, candied nuts and rich cocoa flavour. As with all coffee from the Cirencester-based roastery, this ‘create your own blend’ is made using ethically sourced beans from some of the world’s most respected growing regions, with 1% of all sales donated to environmental causes through the RAVE’s 1% for the Planet commitment.”
How Rave approaches cold coffee
At RAVE, great coffee means a few things: specialty-grade coffee beans sourced sustainably, a healthy, happy, and motivational working environment for its employees, and reasonable, affordable pricing for its customers.
Based on these foundational elements, the company consistently innovates and experiments to advance specialty coffee. The Now That’s What I Call Coffee campaign is one example.
For cold coffee, RAVE offers a suite of products and equipment to help its customers explore new trends. Its Cold Brew Ground Coffee No. 9 blend is a 300g pack, pre-ground to the right consistency for optimised cold brewing extraction. It contains enough for three 1-litre cold brew batches.
Cold brew is a rapidly developing trend in the United Kingdom. RTD cold brew sales, for example, have grown by 60% since 2021. Instead of RTD, RAVE is focusing on helping its customers brew high-quality cold brew at home, contributing to the segment’s overall growth.
On the website listing for the No. 9 Blend, RAVE offers a step-by-step brewing guide and a bundle pack which includes a Hario Cold Brew Pot for easier preparation.
RAVE Coffee has been instrumental in developing regional and national specialty coffee culture through its commitment to sustainable sourcing practices, community involvement, and consumer education. As cold brew and cold coffee more generally continue to grow in popularity, expect RAVE also to play a key role.
Modern consumers demand affordable, varied, high-quality coffee products that are environmentally friendly, well-packaged, and are part of a broader, compelling brand story.
RAVE Coffee ticks all the boxes.
For sustainable, recyclable, cold brew coffee packaging, visit Cold Brew Pak. We offer numerous packaging solutions for the specialty coffee industry, from bag-in-box multi-serve cold brew packaging to flexible pouches and customisable aluminium cans.
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RAVE Coffee
