For the office managers and business owners who keep workplaces running: this is who answers when you call - and how to check we are worth it.
Let’s be realistic
A coffee machine is technology — and like any technology, it can go wrong. This one has the added complications of pipes, pumps, motors, heat and milk, all working together several hundred times a day. Things wear. Things block. Occasionally, things just stop.
That is precisely what we’re for.
We don’t sell coffee machines and disappear; we run them. A real engineer when it’s needed, a replacement if it can’t be saved — and a founder’s mobile in between. We only do this one thing, so we do it properly, and we take it seriously.
Judge us on three things
Attention to detail
Read our warranty’s “what we’ll never do” list. Every line is a specific promise you can hold us to.
Results
Take a machine for a free week. Your team’s verdict on the coffee is the only review that matters.
Determination
When something breaks, watch what happens next. That’s where we earn the contract — not at the signing.
We only do office coffee. No vending, no catering, no sidelines — one thing, done properly.
Our story
This is the real version, not the brochure version. It has losses in it. Every one of them made us more stable, more focused and more useful to the people we work for.
2006
We were the software people building remote management tools for Coffee Nation - the network that became Costa Express - technology watching over thousands of machines pouring millions of cups. (Their CEO, Scott Martin, was an important character in our story; we owe him our gratitude.) Those years taught us how coffee machines really behave: how they fail, how they are fixed, and how much proper care decides whether the coffee is actually good.
Meanwhile
While the software watched machines, Jodie was playing professional football - Sheffield United, Derby, Lincoln and Barnsley. Discipline, teamwork, turning up when it matters: the habits she now brings to installs and support, and passes on managing and mentoring kids' and women's teams. In football you lose matches and play the next one. It turns out that's most of running a business, too.
2009
Venture-backed and growing fast. Our technology was watching machines for Fujifilm, Sony, Morrisons and the big supermarkets, BAA at the airports, Etisalat in the Gulf - reaching as far as the Philippines, Australia and Dubai. We learned what 'reliable' means at scale, across time zones, when a machine failing costs somebody real money.
2012
We sold the business. A good ending - and the start of knowing exactly what we would do differently if we ever began again.
2013
We founded Pep Vending and later handed it on to the existing partners through a management buyout. More machines, more offices, more lessons about what people actually want at 10:40 on a Tuesday.
2019
Office Brew Crew began: bean-to-cup only, offices only, and a promise with a van. Say what a thing costs, do what you said you would do, and don't dress either up - our Northern roots, written into a company.
March 2020
The pandemic arrived and the offices emptied - and with them, most of our business. It was potentially catastrophic. We battened down the hatches, set up Black Bag Coffee to reach people at home, and held our breath for two years. Tough people survive.
2022
When the offices came back, so did we - rebuilt to be pandemic-proof and 100% customer-focused, because we had learned exactly what fragility costs. Leaner, sharper, and clearer about the one thing we do.
Today
If you run an office, you are exactly who we built this for. Hundreds of UK workplaces now run on our machines - every one with a founder's mobile number, a free trial behind it, and a warranty with a 'what we'll never do' list. The company got bigger; the promise stayed the same size.
Next
Grow properly in the UK, then take what works to Australia. If that interests you - as a customer, a partner, or otherwise - contact James.
Trusted by teams at
— and by hundreds of workplaces across the UK.
Who you’re dealing with
James - answers the phone. Actually.
Co-founder · Director of Caffeine & Customer Happiness
The voice on the direct line: advice, quotes, trials, and the standing promise that when you call, a human who knows machines answers.
Off the clock: climbing — Mont Blanc, Italy’s high peaks, a month in Patagonia, and a steadily growing collection of Scottish Munros — plus football, touring Scotland and Europe in the campervan, and lately yoga and circuit training. He’s also an avid birder (which sounds better than “bird geek”, and much better than “ornithologist”). Closer to home, he mentors schoolchildren who struggle with dyslexia and cultural identity — territory he knows first-hand.
Jodie - lifts the boxes, fixes the machines.
Co-founder · the grease and the glue
Jodie makes sure everything we promise actually gets delivered, installed and supported properly. Handier around a machine than James will ever be, she’s the one who keeps the whole thing ticking along — if OBC said it would happen, Jodie is why it did.
Before coffee machines: professional football — Sheffield United, Derby, Lincoln and Barnsley. These days she also manages and mentors kids’ and women’s teams. If you’re wondering why OBC installs run with such discipline, now you know.
Life outside the machines
Community · Real · Authentic · Hard-working · Caring
Why “no BS”
“No bots, no scripts, no BS” isn’t marketing — it’s upbringing.
We treat the world the way we expect to be treated: with truth, and no BS. Call it our Northern roots — round here you say what a thing costs, you do what you said you’d do, and you don’t dress either up.
We’d also been on the receiving end of the other way: supplier phone menus, contracts with surprises on page nine, “account managers” reading from screens. So we wrote down what we never wanted a customer of ours to feel — and everything since (the founder’s mobile on this website, the trial with no card details, the warranty’s “what we’ll never do” list) is just that piece of paper, kept.
Contact + links
We built the software that watched over a nation’s coffee. Now we’d rather just make yours — properly, honestly, and with someone who answers the phone.
Or say hello first: WhatsApp James · 07833 339224