A new coffee experience is coming to Oxford, Adrian Campbell-Howard tells all

Hold on to your hats folks, the coffee offering in the centre of Oxford is about to be taken to the next level: Society are coming to town!

Already firmly established in Bath, with a fiercely loyal following, at Society we have had our sights set on your beautiful city for some time. Our new shop on St Michael’s Street is going to create a new hub in the heart of the city, offering speciality coffee, for one and all.

We, Jane and Adrian, the couple behind Society, are ex-hoteliers and have always had a love of looking after people. Jane started off as a potato peeler for Marco Pierre White and I, Adrian, as a pot-washer in my local greasy spoon. We met when Jane was zooming around the world cheffing for Formula 1 teams and I was running one of the top restaurants in Hong Kong.

In 2000 we bought a hotel in the Cotswolds which we successfully ran for eight years – earning ourselves many accolades and awards. We then took ourselves off for an adventure with our two children and set ourselves up in Marrakech for a few years, running the glorious Riad El Fenn for the Branson family while they were out there.

On our return to the UK, primarily to get back to the hotel business, we set about trying to find the perfect place. Having started off every single hotel viewing in coffee shops, it became very obvious that what was on offer was not good enough and could be vastly improved upon. Our quest to bring superior coffee and service to the High Street began.

Inspired by the new wave of independent artisan coffee shops coming out of Australia and New Zealand, along with a geeky obsession for customer experience from product to service, we decided to open up our own Speciality Coffee shop.

The words ‘Speciality Coffee’ defines coffee that has been graded just after harvest when a small batch is roasted to see if it’s good enough to make the grade – it has to be graded at over 80 out of 100. These coffees are distinctive for their excellent and varied flavours with unique characteristics as a result of climate, soils and meticulous farming. All of Society’s coffees can be traced back to the farm that they are grown on.

“Our philosophy isn’t complicated – we aren’t re-inventing the wheel!” my wife says, “but we are incredibly passionate about cherishing our customers, letting them know how important they are to us and going the extra mile to make sure that they get the very best. In short, we want to offer them everything that they would wish for in a coffee shop.

Society was created with everyone in mind. The space has been designed to be comfortable and inclusive, with enough room for people to come in to do a little work or study, to enjoy meeting friends or making new ones, for a bit of solitude and people-watching.

As well as the amazing coffee, loose-leaf teas will be on offer along with hot chocolates made from chunks of the real stuff! Freshly made cakes will dominate the main bar and a specialist selection of filter coffees will be available at the purpose-built brew bar.

Good wifi, great magazines and arty books to flick through, inspiring art created by local students and artists, bespoke furniture, lighting made by the very talented guys at Shape Studio. This is going to be a pretty special place.

Grinding soon on St Michael’s Street by end-of-February.

FIND OUT MORE
Society, St Michael’s Street, Oxford
www.society-café.com
contact@society-café.com
twitter: @societycafeoxf