Discover Penny and Meriwether with us…

We catch up with co-founder Grace to find out more…

Tell us a bit about Penny and Meriwether and how it came about?

I guess Penny & Meriwether was born, in part, as a way for us to pivot as a business during the pandemic. Alongside my partner, I run our other company Clockwork Espresso, which designs, manufactures and sells coffee equipment, namely the PUSH Tamper. Clockwork Espresso has been running for 5 plus years now, but as with a lot of businesses in the last year, it has been a struggle!

In the early days of Clockwork Espresso, we wanted to be able to offer the option to customise your PUSH tamper but we couldn’t find a partner that offered the right quality, price or lead times, so we decided to invest in our own systems. We have been customising our PUSH tampers for the last 3 years and have also worked on some fun projects with components that go in the Space X rockets and other branding projects for businesses. 

We decided to launch Penny & Meriwether to share our customisation capabilities with more people and offer a unique proposition to consumers and business alike: the opportunity to personalise or customise a curated range of high-quality products, with no minimums and fast lead times. We have launched with a strong focus on coffee equipment, as this is an area that we know so well, but our range is expanding to include home accessories, barware, and pets products. 

Could you run us through the products you offer and why we should invest in some?

We pride ourselves on sourcing great products and curate ranges with products that we love and trust. We offer a wide range of coffee equipment, from great reusable cups to milk jugs, kettles and grinders as well as customisable cocktail sets, home accessories and a pet’s range which is Rafa’s (our dog) very own passion project! 

Our coffee equipment range offers some great products to get you started with brewing at home and who doesn’t need a beautifully designed Fellow Carter Mug for those socially distanced rambles?!

With the option to personalise or customise any of our products, these also make a great gift and we regularly work with local businesses to put together unique gift sets, including our care packages which have just launched. 

You can also brand any of our products with your own logo which makes great merchandise for your customers. Check out the lovely Carter mugs that we recently customised for Canny Goat and who knows maybe we will see some High Life North branded stash at some point in the future… 😉

Do you have any top tips for us brewing our coffee at home? 

Yes, get trying some great local coffee! There are so many great roasters in the North East that getting through all their coffee will keep your supply going for ages! Some favourites are Gold Box Coffee and Pink Lane Coffee but I am also excited to try some coffee from Yakka Coffee which has just opened.

If you are serious about brewing coffee at home, it is also definitely worth investing in some good equipment and it is becoming a lot more accessible now. I normally drink espresso during the week and use a Sage machine at home and when I have more time at the weekend, I will brew filter using my Fellow Stagg Kettle (personalised of course!) and a V60. 

What’s your favourite Penny and Meriwether product?

This is a very difficult question to answer! I love the Fellow Carter Everywhere Mug – I think the design is beautiful and the colours are great too. Plus it keeps your drink hot for hours and I have been known to eat ice cream from it in the summer! 

I also love our cocktail set – from a personal point of view, it is the first product in the range that I have sourced and put together as a set. It was also great to work with Dan Fellows to come up with cocktail recipes and I think the set is a great starter for anyone making cocktails at home and a great gift for anyone! We have enjoyed a good few cocktail nights over Zoom with friends in the last year!

You’ve got your coffee in your personalised Carter takeaway flask, where in the North East would be your ideal spot to enjoy it?

Now that we have Rafa, our dog, we have become ‘walkers’ and now enjoy nothing better than a ramble in the countryside, preferably with as many muddy puddles for Rafa to jump through! One of our favourite spots to explore is the Simonside hills. In a world where everything is back up and running, my perfect day would be heading to Kith & Kin to pick up a takeaway coffee in my Carter mug and then heading to the beach, there is nothing better than the sea air to put a smile on your face!