I rate this as the best coffee shop in Glasgow - and I discovered my gran drank the same brew

One of my first, and favourite, jobs was working in and then managing a cafe in my hometown. I like to think it was well before its time, serving and selling organic, local produce, with pretty much everything made from scratch.

Despite very early starts, the love I had for baking cakes and traybakes, making pizza dough and soup and starting up the massive coffee machine helped ease any tiredness or weekend hangovers (that, and I was in my 20s). This was a time when coffee terminology that we know today - Americano and the still-as-cringeworthy babyccino - were in their infancy and proper training on the quality of coffee and how to make these drinks was pretty non-existent.

Fast forward more years than I care to think about and coffee culture is fully ingrained into Scottish society. I’m now a flat white a day person and have moved on from the achingly sweet Starbucks creations to the achingly hipster coffees from the many, many wonderful cafes in Glasgow.

My absolute favourite coffee shop is 1841 on Vinicombe Street in the west end. A cosy space, the coffee is unbelievably good - the type where you can actually taste some of the notes they put on the bags of beans for sale. It’s a real treat to pop in here for a morning flat white, but it was only after a shopping trip with my mum that I realised the business’s history and a link to my family.

Thomson's Coffee

1841 is owned by Thomson's Coffee Roasters, which was founded in - you guessed it - 1841 in Glasgow. Edinburgh-based David Thomson, a tea and coffee merchant, moved from Edinburgh to Glasgow and set up his namesake company.

Thomson’s started supplying freshly ground coffee to Glasgow’s busy coffee houses and, at this time, David Thomson started manufacturing Naperian vacuum coffee pots, invented by Scot James Napier, which were shipped worldwide.

William Addison took over the business in 1892 after the passing of David, and in 1960 the Thomson’s business constructed a custom-designed roastery on Glasgow’s Southside, where it is still located to this day.

Stores opened across Scotland, but in 2005 the Addison family retired and shut the Renfield Street store, putting the business up for sale in 2009. It was bought in 2011 by the Jenkins, the third family to own this business since 1841. From 2018, Thomson’s returned to the city with pop-up coffee shops and in 2020 opened my favourite shop 1841.

Thomson's Coffee

Despite shops opening and closing, Thomson’s coffee has been available to buy in retailers, including their Blue Mountain blend. It’s my go-to and, it turns out it was my gran’s favourite as well.

Being from Govan, it makes sense my gran would buy coffee from Glasgow. My mum told me of the tins of Thomson’s Blue Mountain coffee that my gran would buy, as I was purchasing the vacuum-packed modern-day alternative of the exact same coffee. So while our trendy coffees in compostable cups are a huge part of our lives, the liquid inside of these may have more of a history than customers realise.