Part Two. A love affair with coffee and how NOT to buy a van…

In all honesty I f*cked up. I’m not afraid to admit that, and I’m treating it as a learning curve.

Here was the van when I bought it in August. It’s a french van called an AXIAM mega Van

I’d seen a few of them around serving coffee and I thought they were cute.

But this is right where things stopped being cute and started getting pretty f*cking difficult.

Driving back with my newest business asset was where the worries began. I enlisted the ever-reliable Alice for the task and so, she + me + her dog Charli took the very long drive back to SE London.

As Alice drove, with Charli on my lap, I swore A LOT as it dawned on me what a teeny tiny van this was. It was like nothing I’d driven before; we weren’t going anywhere fast and even as a passenger it was a very bumpy ride!

But we made it back in one piece. And so, the process of branding, updating and transforming it into Sunshine began.

The most important thing to me since starting RMB in 2016 has always been presenting my brand in a cohesive way. Quality is so important. 

And so, I was only ever going to serve really good coffee in our van.

But of course, in my usual JFDI style, I really didn’t know that doing that in a van (let alone a tiny bumpy van) is quite a challenge.

Having taken advice from the lovely people at Monmouth Coffee and trained in espresso making on a La Marzocco - I eagerly sent them the specs of the machine that was in the van as I bought it. Their not quite so positive response was “err. ok not great, you could pair it with a really good grinder and you’d be ok for a while.” 

Well clearly I was never going to do OK.

So, I decided I’d better buy a La Marzocco coffee machine.

I managed to find a pristine second-hand Linea Classic from a lovely man called Jay who was doing tattoos and coffee in Queen’s Park before the landlords seriously upped his rent. 

Of course, I never stopped to consider whether this HUGE 2 group machine would work in my little van.

All the gear no idea... blah blah blah.

(I also bought an ex-demo Linea Mini from a café - for training, plus events where the van can’t work. Buuut it sat on my kitchen counter at home and it really, really makes my day.)

Now I needed to make the van look ready too…

I thought that this would be the easy bit - just vinyl that could be taken off. Turns out it was actually quite a lot of peeling paint AND very old vinyl which took a lot of phone calls to figure out how I was going to remove it all. 

I eventually found a company just up the road that were willing to remove and respray - I should have recorded what they said when they first looked at my van, but it was something along the lines of “WTF is it? It's making a load of noise?”

And so armed with my new RMB colour palette, (thanksSina) myself and Alice made a plan for the respray.

Somewhere along the way - the van had been given her name...Sunshine. So, of course she was going to have to be mostly orange!

I was so bloody happy when I picked her up. It was the first time that I thought ok this is coming together. 

I should point out that I still hadn’t actually driven it myself - my partner Robbie was doing A LOT of ferrying her back and forth.

We were quite a few £££ in. And I still didn’t have the coffee making bit set up yet. 

I just wasn't willing to compromise on the standard of coffee. And despite my research and stalking some coffee vans on Pinterest for alternative ideas, all I really wanted was to put my big La Marzocco in my little van.

You know how sometimes you hope for something and it just happens…

Well, the kind folk at Monmouth introduced me to an amazing website called United Baristas. It’s a really great tool for anyone in the coffee business with equipment old + new for sale, blogs, and lots of business advice, plus companies that advertise their services. 

And it was here that I found Bart from Espresso Clinic – Bart knows his coffee machines having been servicing them all over London for years. 

I called him to explain… “I've got a little van and I have a machine that needs to be unplumbed and taken out. Then I have a 2 group La Marzocco to put in, oh and that needs to be converted from a commando socket to a 13 amp, and then I need a new water filter system in there, oh and I need a grinder too.”  

Amazingly and thankfully, he said yes, yes and YES!!

So more £££ spent and Bart arrives and does everything he says he will. He’s an absolute encyclopaedia of knowledge about coffee and equipment.

And we finally have a really good set up inside the van. 

But funnily enough I hadn’t given much thought to the power requirements outside the van…

I could probably write a separate blog post in itself about this but, in essence... most coffee vans run off gas. I did not want gas. So, we’d have to have an electric hook up wherever we worked. And with said fancy coffee machine the van pulls quite a bit of power, meaning that getting the places to trade was not going to be as easy as I’d first thought. 

So just to recap…

I've got a converted pre “loved” van on my drive that I haven’t driven yet

She’s got a name

She’s been (mostly) rebranded.

I’ve got one of the best coffee machines in the world set up inside 

But I’ve got nowhere to actually sell coffee.

And don’t forget that meanwhile in the background is my actual catering business in the middle of the crazy busy summer period, catering for events all over London, plus we’re trying to finish a new website and brand refresh. Oh,and I'm trying to be a good mum too.

But, as you’ll have gathered by now, I don’t do things by halves and one sunny afternoon I happened to be listening to a house music show and I heard this amazing track called "Good Morning Sunshine' by Magic Number. 

It was literally talking to me about the journey so far and my life in general…and it sparked an idea…we need a launch party for Sunshine!

I’ll get my amazing friend Amy who just happens to be an incredible DOP to film it and do a video to launch on socials

I’ll get Emma (who had taken beautiful pictures for my new website) to take stills. 

I can invite all the lovely local gang and I’ll get an amazing barista in there. 

And so, Somehow, with a lot of amazing people helping, It all came together.

Alice worked with a vinyl company and we got the final touches done (literally the night before) on branding Sunshine to look how she is today.

I borrowed a driveway and power from my lovely friend Clea in Telegraph Hill. And on one of the most SCORCHING days of the year we launched Sunshine.

It was such a beautiful morning. Runa made many beautiful and delicious coffees; we served St Johns pastries and I told my "I just wanted to serve really good coffee at shoots and maybe at a local station story" quite a few times. Along with “WTF have I done?”

Sunshine was now out in the world, 

But we still needed to find a regular local spot. 

We needed to get the logistics running smoothly. The cab of the van needed a once over too.

And then over the next few weeks there were garage visits, breakdowns, A LOT of stress because the van didn't drive as the previous owner said it did and things started to look pretty bleak. 

I made a lot of calls. I sent pictures and dimensions of the van to a lot of different contacts. Stations, shops with forecourts outside in Nunhead, companies managing the retail elements of stations. Farmers markets. And I got a lot of no, sorry we don't have the power or space or license. 

But finally, I got an email from Lawrence at Telegraph Hill Farmers Market…

We got a Saturday spot.

Now, neither I, Alice or Ekua (who works for RMB in the kitchen) were baristas. We had been having training with Monmouth and the lovely Tom Misar and getting there with the milk art but we weren’t ready. 

So, a few days before our first Saturday market day I went on the industry respected app - Baristas on Tap and put a callout for HELP! And along came Cherry.

That first Saturday was like someone (hopefully my mum, from heaven, where she's listening to the Bee Gees and eating Topics) sent me a message that I had done the right thing, I was on the right path – it was just a bumpy one.

We made over 200 drinks. Cherry turned out to be the most brilliant barista and has been with us for most Saturdays since. Sunshine was greeted with so much excitement and positivity. And I lost count of the amount of times people said " this is really good coffee " 

I certainly didn't envisage myself back on a market, it's where it all started for me with the granola and it's really, really hard work. I’m lifting 25 litre water tanks around, making lots of sandwiches on a Saturday morning, working every weekendand trying to get my head around the logistics of coffee stock, staff, systems, and equipment challenges.

But what I will say is that what I set out to do, we are doing. 

The journey is ongoing and I’ve learnt a lot about myself and others in the process.

I’m still working on understanding and managing my JFDI attitude.

But I am so excited about our new coffee services. We have more than just Sunshine - it's all here.

Sunshine with all her ups and downs has become like one of our family now. Ridiculous I know but that's how it is. 

And I think she (like me) would really just like to be plotted up at a farmers market in Provence or Ibiza. 

One day I hope…

Love Rebecca 

PS Don’t' drink shit coffee