Coffee blenders and roasters Pumphrey's has been producing drinks to stimulate the tastebuds of connoisseurs for 250 years. CHRISTOPHER KNOX met the chairman of the Tyneside family business to discover how he has taken the business into new markets.

PUMPHREY’S began life in 1750 as an upmarket family grocers in Newcastle town centre, which benefited from the increasing levels of exotic imports shipped to Tyneside, which included a wide variety of foreign teas and coffees.

With a growing taste for the beverage among the city’s elite, Pumphrey’s coffee rooms soon became a honeypot for the city’s banking and insurance community, with many of the big deals of the day hammered out there.

These days, the company is headed up by the Archer family after it took over the Pumphrey’s name in 1983 after establishing its own successful tea business in the region.

Stuart Archer, 59, who runs the company with brother and joint managing director Malcolm Archer, said: “When we took over the business during the 1980s, the Pumphrey’s family was dwindling out, with only one connection to the family left, and even he had married into the business.

“They were looking for someone to take it forward, so it was a great opportunity for us to pull together to help the brand to survive. That was in the days when my dad, Jeffrey, who died two years ago, ran his own tea business, Tyne Teas Limited.”

Not only did the Archer family ensure the survival of the Pumphrey’s brand, they are now looking to grow the business after establishing the firm’s first coffee shop in 30 years at the Metrocentre. It is also set to open a new ‘brew bar’ at its shop in Newcastle’s Grainger Market, which will allow customers to sample the many blends that are sold there.

Although the current chairman has developed a love of coffee over the years, it was his passion for sport which shaped the early part of his career.

Born in Barton upon Humber during the short time that his dad worked there at shoe chain Stead & Simpson, Archer attended schools in Gosforth in Newcastle before studying at Madeley College of Education in Staffordshire to become a sports master. After completing his studies, he began teaching PE at St Thomas More School, Blaydon.

“I had always been interested in sport, having played a lot of football and rugby in my youth, as well as a bit of tennis,” he says.

“I was very influenced by one of my games teachers at college who I followed down to Madeley College. I loved teaching, and what was nice was that I saw kids through from 11 to 16. What’s weird is that the few that I bump into at Blaydon precinct still call me sir.”

However, the opportunity to work with his family saw Archer join Pumphrey’s in 1978. He explains: “One of the directors at Pumphrey’s decided to move on and the opportunity was there for me to join the family business. It just felt right and had a nice feeling about it, so I decided to change my career path.

“However, I still believe that my experiences as a PE teacher have helped me in what I do now.

“There are a lot of parallels to be made with team sports and running a business. Both are about getting everyone to pull together and perform at the best of their ability. The feeling was that we had a small business with a lot of potential if we got it right.”

As well as supplying around 40 different types of coffee to over 600 coffee shops in the North East and way beyond, Pumphrey’s runs its own coffee making master classes at its head offices in Blaydon.

Headed up by Archer’s son, Stewart Lee Archer, the training room carries out master classes three days a week, so that the region’s independent coffee shops are able to continue providing the best quality coffees, as well as ensuring that its customers have a reason to bypass the high street chains.

Archer says: “There was a period when coffee became compromised and was seen as just another condiment. As a result, there was a bit of a lull when I joined Pumphrey’s.

“Although the proliferation of coffee chains has helped to heighten the awareness of coffee and helped to make it fashionable again, we are now seeing a third generation of coffee lover who cares about where their coffee comes from and how it is made.

“That’s why we won’t sell what are known as ‘press button bean to cup machines’, which will grind the coffee and automatically brew it.

“Where is the passion in that, where is the care and attention? There is a lot of things a barista can do to affect the flavour of the coffee, that’s why we provide our training courses.

“Also, in a lot of the chains they will use only one espresso for all of their coffees. We are very much about helping our customers to use a number of bespoke blends which they can use to give their businesses a unique experience, which is particularly important in today’s economic climate.

“It’s so easy to take the time and attention to produce quality coffee, so why not do it ?”

The family recently opened Pumphrey’s Cafe at the Metrocentre in Gateshead, which includes its own brew bar, where coffee is freshly brewed by the cup, individually for each customer, and sells homemade cakes, tray bakes, sandwiches and paninis.

The outlet is the distant descendant of Pumphrey’s Cafe in Newcastle’s Cloth Market, which closed in the 1970s and was turned into a pub.

Archer, who lives in north Northumberland, stresses that the new cafe and a revamped website is all part of ensuring that the historic business is fit for the 21st century.

He says: “While we are keen to highlight our history and retain the type of branding that showcases our old fashioned values, that’s as old fashioned as it gets.

“Some of the machines we are selling to our customers are highly advanced and require a team of service engineers on standby.

“One of the reasons that we decided to open a site at the Metrocentre was that we wanted our staff to know what it was like to work at the sharp end of a coffee shop business.

“Not only does it provide an extra stream of revenue for us, it also adds an extra dimension to our training operations as we can prove that our advice really works.”

Pumphrey’s, which also has Archer’s daughter Paula as sales and marketing manager and his brother’s niece Sarah working in production, has seen its workforce go up from 22 to 30 since the opening of the new shop, with the firm expecting to increase its turnover from £1.2m to £1.5m this year.

However, Archer is cautious of growing too quickly and believes his focus on quality will best place the firm for any future expansion.

He said: “It’s often the case that coffee shops lose a bit of quality control when then they decide to grow a chain. We’re more concerned with supporting our trade and retail customers in making the best and most unique coffee they can. That’s where we see the most potential for the business.”

With 33 years’ experience in the business, Archer admits to being a bit of a “coffee geek”, with the downside being that he has become rather critical when trying out other people’s brews.

He says: “I reckon that if someone put six cups of coffee in front of myself, Malcolm and my son, we could determine the origin of each one. When you’re tasting coffee every day, you realise which ones have the really strong flavours and which ones are more subtle.

“It is a bit of an occupational hazard I guess. I do so much tasting of our own coffee that I know immediately when something isn’t right.

“It means I can be a bit critical when eating out. However, I’m not as bad as my son, who will go into coffee shops and ask if he can make his own coffee with their machine, which can get particularly tense if the manager is around.”