Member Article

Waking up to flavoured coffee

A flavoured coffee company is waking up the market and growing its team to meet demand.

Beanies, which is based in Darlington and sells a wide range of instant coffee in over 40 flavours, has enjoyed brand growth of nearly 40 per cent since before the pandemic, and has taken on three members of staff in 2022 alone.

With a workforce of 35 based in the company’s Faverdale Industrial Estate factory, the firm has grown consistently since its launch in 2013. Earlier this year, it won a Queen’s Award for International Trade in recognition of its growth and commercial success. In the UK the company supplies retailers such as Sainsbury’s, Aldi, Lidl and Home Bargains.

Beanies’ Sales and Marketing Director Mark Stangroom said: “The Beanies brand is going from strength to strength. It has grown 38 per cent since before Covid and our Queen’s Award win was based on seven years of continuous export growth.

“In terms of sales, we have seen a small dip post-pandemic in line with many other companies that sell online, as there was a peak in web sales during lockdown. However, we’re keen to get back up to where we were during the pandemic, but we know it may come from other areas other than web sales, including export – we currently sell to more than 30 countries worldwide, including South Africa, India, Malaysia, and Japan, and we have just started selling in Australia as well.”

The Beanies team have recently returned from a trade show is Paris where they picked up a large number of opportunities in new countries abroad.

Beanies was launched in 2013 to offer coffee lovers a choice of easy-to-make flavoured coffees. Its most popular varieties are Nutty Hazelnut, Creamy Caramel, Amaretto Almond and Irish Cream, with seasonal favourites such as Pumpkin Spice, Peppermint Candy Cane, Gingerbread and Hot Cross Bun. The coffees are sugar free and low calorie which makes them an everyday treat, even for those on a diet.

Mark added: “The ethos of Beanies is offering our customers a lot of choice and depending on their mood they can then choose the flavour that they want to have - most have an array of our flavours in their cupboards.

“We also let our large number of social media followers choose the name of our promo vehicle, which we use for sampling and events. After a competition on social media during our rebrand last year, the winning suggestion was the Lamborbeanie!

“The van, which was wrapped by Screentech with its new name, will help us to raise awareness through more events and sampling, so that a wider range of people can try our delicious flavours both in the UK and abroad.”

For more information about the Beanies range, visit the website.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Beanies .