Happy 9th Birthday to Dog & Hat Coffee Club!!

As we head into our ninth year (woo!), we wanted to share a bit about how much we love our coffee business and our customers, and tell some of the story of how we got here.

Thank you! D&H are super lucky to have the best customers, we see rare conflict, and when a new starter joins us I always explain we operate a tight ship, but everyone is happy, we do not choose conflict as an option, we follow a Keep it Simple Sally (KISS) rule and we love that our customers and roasters are all so lovely to work with.  

Where it all started

Nine years ago, Dog & Hat was nothing more than an idea, Su was trying to figure out where to work in 2017, Su was facing a choice that many parents know: return to the sales job in London, with a long commute every day, or stay at home with her two daughters, who were both under 2 at the time and the maths it simply didn’t make sense! 

So instead, Su sat down and wrote a list of the things she loved most, which is defined on the internet as one of the best ways to decide what business to run: dogs in hats as usually on YouTube, a university favourite.... I absolutely loved coffee and as she had worked in tech all her life.... technology. I was had worked in networking and software development, and I was wondering about eCom and Subscription, its a lavish world of online tech and payment gateways -  And somehow, that little list became Dog & Hat Coffee Club. Thank goodness as AI and the cloud would have taken all my previous roles. 

We registered the domain dogandhat.co.uk, built our first website on Shopify, and partnered with Recharge to handle the subscriptions. The original logo came from the US for $50, and the website was designed by Su and Dave. D&H operated out of the home garage, part time, and sort of co-existed with the family needs. I happily hung around various parts of the house running my business then when the girls got to school I could really focus. 

D&H took on our first staff member in 2019, when I wanted to focus more on sales and we decided we would drive the business further, the covid hit and we grew like Crazy! D&H sat tight, not knowing if Covid would allow parcels :-) it did that goodness.  Then we grew organically from there though referrals and online forums. 2024 saw us move into a dedicated unit where we operate from now with 4 members of staff. 

Here are a few fun stories along the way:

🎉  A little domain saga in the story. In 2020, someone bought dogandhat.com and tried to sell it back to us for £7,000. We were bombarded with calls and emails about it! Thankfully, the domain eventually lapsed in 2022, and we managed to pick it up for £120.

🎂 A fox stole a box of coffee in the south of England, opened the coffee, read the book and left it all over the garden, obvs we replaced the box, the pictures were fun.

🎈 D&H ship all over the world, we regularly ship to UK, USA, Bancock and Honk Kong.

🍰 UPS once tried to charge us £600 per box for 10 box shipment from Amsterdam UPS, they stood at the door of the office would not deliver unless we paid the fees. It should have been £600 for import fees for the whole shipment. I was advised to pay and claim back off HMRC however I disagreed as this was administration error, and £6000 to the black hole of HMRC reclaim error paperwork. The boxes were returned to sender, which was the only way out of this and the correct paperwork re-issued. 

✨ This customs error was a stark contrast to a coffee roaster from Holland who shipped me a few thousand bags of coffee, with a value of thousands for 0.10p.... yes that was the value they declared for import. The pallet was moved to Bonded Warehouse and D&H were put under investigation as it looked like we did not want to pay tax. I only got these out because I told some big wig at Fedex about the plight of my business and he helped me, I think the assumption then being fraudsters do not make a fuss and ask for help! 

🧁 D&H have purchased two other subscription companies, we buy the subscribers and we import them onto our platform and pay the original business owners out over a few years. There is a perception this business is easy, its not, but we love it! 

🍾 Our business is debt free and growing. Su in not stress free, but getting there! 

So What we've built! 

Over nine years, we've partnered with roasters across the UK and the world, from Papercup and Radical to Colours Coffee, Scenery, and beyond. We added the Bag Shop so people can buy individual bags without a subscription. Built an amazing group of customers, they are just the best!

We built our Magazine, which became a place for real coffee content and conversation, which has evolved from a hap hazard design to something quite smart! 

D&H grown a team- huge thanks to Emma, Jim, Olivia, the pack day team and of course Charlie for all their hard work.

Looking back now, it’s pretty amazing to see what came from that original idea.

This year, we’ve given Dog & Hat a bit of a refresh.

2026 brought us a brand-new website, a redesigned logo and a complete visual refresh, all designed to reflect where we are today, while keeping the things that have always made us, us: fresh coffee, great roasters and all delivered straight to your door.

Evolving behind the scenes: we streamlined our dispatch schedule to the 1st and 16th of each month meaning we now do all round shipping! This is a huge step for our small business but meaning we can ship fresh coffee daily to all our customers makes us happy! If you are a subscriber then... you know sometimes you ask for coffee to be shipped sooner, its is now possible! 

Thank you for being part of this journey. It wouldn’t have happened without your support, your loyalty and the relationships we’ve built with our customers, partners and roasters along the way.

Nine years is rare for a business, so THANK YOU!

So, here’s to everything we’ve built so far, and to whatever comes next.

Happy 9th birthday, Dog & Hat! ☕🐶🎉