Who is behind I Love Decaf and why?
Where it started
If you must know here it is, warts and all…
The bit that is actually true
David Holly is the person behind I Love Decaf. He works from a studio containing roughly 30 kinds of tea and coffee, which is either a product testing facility or a fairly specific cry for help.
There are usually at least five decaf coffees in rotation because one coffee cannot reasonably be expected to handle mornings, afternoons, evenings, difficult emails and pretending to read terms and conditions.
The real starting point was simple. Decaf shelves were full of things described by what had been taken away, with very little said about the flavour left behind. I Love Decaf was built to find and sell drinks worth choosing in their own right.
Everything else on this page has been checked by our legal department, which does not exist.
Our mission is to make wellness accessible and sustainable for everyone
Our founder, David Holly, first had the idea for I Love Decaf after the anger management course he was attending ran out of piñatas to beat senseless with a stick. Disappointed that he would not, after all, earn 3 kilos of e-numbers and cane sugar for his violent revenge on a papier-mâché donkey, he escaped the maximum-security stockade and fled to the home counties where he remains to this day, still wanted and surviving as a soldier of fortune.
Determined to make a difference in the world, he became determined to help people kick the evil habit of caffeine addiction so that they could lead a life of calm and peaceful unity with the universe. He was, as all of us are, almost undone during a visit to a supermarket, where packet after packet of decaf tea and coffee contained almost no flavours.
His long years of zen-like calm saved the day and he determined instead to set out on a journey to make decaf drinks that all could truly love. Where flavour mattered and nobody would ever have to beat up a papier-mâché donkey ever again.
What is I Love Decaf?
Today, I Love Decaf has bloomed into a huge organisation of dedicated staff where the hand of management is so benevolent and caring that not everybody realises that they even work for us. A company founded on deep love and respect for every point of view, even the ones that are completely and totally wrong on every level. A company with a completely flat organisational diagram, viewed from the paper’s edge. An organisation where nobody is ever made redundant or fired, just de-staffeinated.
Our gargantuan cottage factories hire 1000s of staff to manually grind each bean individually, because there’s no I in coffee bean.
Our Diversity and Culture Director is so effective that he cancelled himself last year.
The delivery vans are ethically sourced – that is, they’re not stolen. Our carbon footprint fits inside a carbon stiletto.
We always say that our products speak better for us than we can ourselves and that may be apparent, indeed, obvious. We will leave the last words to our founder, Mr David Holly.
“Have you tried our latest…?”
How anything gets into the shop
There is a process. It is marginally more rigorous than putting everything on a table and pointing.
It has to taste good
Not good “for decaf”. Good without an asterisk, an apology or someone quietly reaching for the sugar.
It has to be useful
We look at the origin, roast, decaf process, grind choices and how it behaves in the machines people actually own.
It has to survive us
Products need enough character to withstand the names, packaging and descriptions inflicted on them by management.
David’s current three
Current because coffee cupboards are not democracies and coups happen.
The Only Trillionaire’s
The one for silencing a decaf sceptic
A Great Taste Award winner with a velvety chocolate and nut profile, light caramel, malt biscuit and enough body to make “but it’s decaf” sound particularly stupid.
Luxe Organic Honduran
The cupboard constant
Organic, Fairtrade and Swiss Water decaffeinated, with praline chocolate notes and the calm confidence of a coffee that has nothing left to prove.
Orizaba Mountain Water
The safe first move
Smooth and versatile with fruit, chocolate, nut and honey characteristics. A very sensible introduction to the range, which makes its inclusion here slightly suspicious.
Meet the team behind the love
A compact organisation held together by coffee, misplaced confidence and one cat who refuses to sign the staff handbook.
David Holly
Founder who’s fortunes are melting into a mug of coffee
Hulk Hogan
Talking cat
The coffee with no name
Sales guru
Sarah Yogi
Moral support
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