27th August 2026
I have been around coffee since my father sold his first case back in May 1979, and in that time I have watched plenty of businesses buy their beans from whoever happened to send the cheapest price list that week. It rarely ends well. Coffee is not a commodity you can simply tick off an order form and forget about, and the difference between a decent cup and a memorable one usually comes down to who you buy it from.
Here is why I believe working with a specialist coffee wholesaler makes a real difference to a hospitality business.
A general catering supplier will sell you coffee alongside cling film and washing up liquid. We do one thing, and we have been doing it for more than forty years. That means when you ring us and say your espresso is tasting bitter, we can talk you through grind settings, dose and extraction time rather than offering to send out a replacement box.
Our Q grade tasters sit down with green coffee before it ever reaches your counter. When we built our own Street & Co. blend, we selected 100% Arabica beans from Brazil, Nicaragua and Costa Rica to land on a medium roast with toffee sweetness, honeyed notes and a soft citrus finish. That kind of decision takes time and palate, and it is the sort of work a specialist puts in on your behalf.
No two venues need the same thing. A busy gastro pub pulling three hundred coffees a day has different requirements to a village tearoom or a hotel putting filter bags in bedrooms.
Because we are specialists, we hold breadth. We are an official Lavazza supplier, so if your customers want the classic Italian profile, we can put Gran Espresso or Top Class in front of them. If you would rather something contemporary, our own blends are ready to go. If you want beans nobody else in your town can sell, our private label service lets you build a coffee under your own name, from the blend and roast through to the packaging design.
Great beans through a neglected machine will still produce disappointing coffee. This is where a specialist earns their keep.
We supply and service machines from Conti, La Spaziale, Jura, Lavazza and others, and our engineers achieve a 98% first fix rate on repair callouts. We handle annual servicing, descales, water filter changes and PSSR boiler certification, which is a legal requirement for any commercial machine with a pressurised boiler. If a machine has to come back to our workshop, we leave a loan machine in its place so you carry on trading.
A supplier who only sells you a bag of beans cannot do any of that.
You can buy the finest beans in the country and still serve a poor flat white if nobody has shown your staff how to steam milk properly. Our foundation course runs for three hours, either at our Greenhithe training room or on your own equipment, and covers everything from tamping and grind adjustment to microfoam and machine cleaning. For teams who want formal recognition, we can take you through to the City and Guilds Level 2 Award in Barista Skills.
Customers ask questions now, and they deserve straight answers. We work with Fairtrade, Organic and Rainforest Alliance certified coffees, and our Street & Co. range is RFA certified. Fair treatment of growers has been part of how we operate since the beginning rather than something we added when it became fashionable.
We are still a family business, and I like it that way. You get people who know your name, your site and your order history. If you would like to talk about your coffee, ring us on 01322 381380 or email orders@jsbeverage.com and we will take it from there.
