Welcome to our lovely new blog. We've been meaning to start one for a while to help you stay up to date with everything going on at Shiloh and to share bits and pieces about one of our favourite topics - coffee. Specifically - ethical coffee.

For those who are new to Shiloh, and for our loyal customers who like the occasional reminder, here's a brief lowdown. Shiloh Coffee Roasters was launched in 2016 by husband-and-wife duo Mark and Jean Armstrong. Trained chef Mark's interest in roasting ethical coffee was sparked by Jean's grandmother, who grows coffee in Kenya, gifting the couple some green (unroasted) coffee beans.

A whole lot of research, learning and practising later, Mark was a fully-fledged coffee roaster roasting ethically-sourced beans from around the world in a purpose-built roastery in their back garden in Leeds.

As the business grew, they moved the business to an industrial unit in Leeds, where they were also able to run a coffee shop for a time.

Fast forward to 2023 and Mark, Jean and their two children relocated to Mark's home county of Cumbria, where they now operate from a business park in Whitehaven.

Now Mark's kept busy roasting Shiloh specialty coffee for a wide range of individual and wholesale customers who buy both on subscription and ad hoc, and roasting coffee for a number of white label customers who sell it under their own brand names.

Meanwhile, Jean is kept busy holding everything together behind the scenes. We don't know whether the old saying is true that behind every good man is a great woman but it definitely applies in this case.

Being so busy roasting, grinding and sending out all your lovely coffee orders, keeping all the back office stuff up to date (and occasionally running the vacuum cleaner over the roastery floor - hint hint, Mark) means Mark and Jean don't have much time to shout about how amazing their business and products are.

So, in late 2023, I came on board. I'm Sarah and I'm here to (hopefully) make sure we keep you in the loop about everything you could possibly want to know about Shiloh. 

I've been drinking Shiloh coffee since 2016 so I can vouch for the great taste and quality of the products, and the wonderful, friendly customer service provided by Mark and Jean.

At the same time, I'm still learning about coffee (and if there's one thing I've realised so far it's that every little thing I think I've learned has opened the door to at least three other things I don't understand yet). As a result I feel like we're on a bit of a journey together, where my aim is to get Mark to explain bite-size chunks of information about all things coffee in terms that I can understand so that I can share it with you and we can, I hope, all increase our coffee-related knowledge.

As a former journalist, I'm used to learning a lot about a tiny area of a particular topic in a very short space of time so I can explain it to other people. Now I suspect I'm going to be learning a huge amount about one topic I never realised was so huge, over a very long period of time. And I'm looking forward to taking you along with me on the ride.