The coffee roasters
When David and Ruth Elkington were looking for a new home for their roastery, Talbot Yard seemed ideal. They were running the CottonHouse Coffee Shop in Helmsley and took a stall at the Malton Food Festival in 2013 where they discovered that the yard was being developed; David went for a look and thought ‘this might work! The position was right, we liked the lovely old coaching yard, and the buildings – dilapidated but handsome, and so we committed ourselves to the project. Because we came on board early, we were able to make the building fit our business rather than the other way round.’
David, originally a youth worker from Lincoln, and Ruth, a former textile designer from Cleethorpes have a young family who are often in evidence – it’s very much a family affair. ‘My passion has always been coffee,’ says David. ‘So I started studying the roasting process. I soon realised that this was me; this was what I wanted to do. I didn’t just want to splash hot water into a pot, I wanted to source and roast my own coffee.’
In May 2015 they moved in after converting one of the old farm buildings, and with the attractive café, with its exposed brickwork, cushions fashioned from coffee sacks and the roaster in full view, started trading.
It’s a very attractive space, with the coffee shop occupying one side of the building – you can score an exemplary flat white here, and drink it sitting on vintage furniture while you read the papers. The impressive roasting machine (a black and silver DIEDRICH IR-12 for you aficionados) is on full show, and you can watch the process through the floor to ceiling windows on Mondays and Tuesdays.
‘The shop is very much a showcase for future customers, as well as a comfortable pit-stop for our regulars’, says David, ‘We offer 50% off our coffee for local businesses, and we swap goods – a bag of coffee for a steak! We feel very much a part of what Malton is doing. The food market draws huge crowds, and they come and find us here in the Yard with the bakery, distillery, confectioners, butchers and gelato parlour.’
With a huge range of varieties from across the world, their popular roasts are their Brazil, Rwanda and the signature ‘Roost Espresso’ blend.
‘We weren’t sure in the beginning if it would work – it was a big risk – but it’s been a great success. We’re on the Malton Food Tours circuit too, so we’re pretty busy!’