Launching as the Cambridge Coffee Company in Hills Road in 2001 in the back of a bike shop with just one member of staff, we quickly expanded into the bike shop and added a further three stores.
Then in 2007 we decided to break from the high street to concentrate on the leisure, outdoor market, we sold the Cambridge Coffee Company and formed AE Catering Limited, named after our children Alfie & Esme (luckily our third child is named Ava Effie).
Where we are at now
We currently have 9 cafés, a 2016 rebrand to the trading name of Grounds Cafés finally linked all the sites together. Our company kitchen is based in Cambridge, where our chefs prepare homemade cakes, homemade soups for our sites and also our fantastic Grounds gelato, a definite must if you are a visitor at any time of the year.
Our initiatives
Here at Grounds we are always moving towards a more sustainable business and to work hard to close the loop on recycling. The coffee you buy produces a lot of waste however, at Grounds instead of throwing it away we recycle the coffee by sending it to BioBean Ltd who create ‘coffee logs’. These are burnable logs that will fuel our wood burners; you can also buy these at all of our sites to fuel your own. We also have our own company kitchen where we make all of our homemade gelato the machines we use to make it are powered by the sun from our solar panels on our roof!
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