Spotlight On… Coffee Maestro Joe Meagher

If you’ve been a regular customer at Newcastle coffee shop Flat Caps, you’ll have noticed that changes are afoot, with a name change to Tiny Tiny and various other incremental updates. So we caught up with owner and coffee supremo Joe Meagher to find out what’s happening and why.

Joe first opened Flat Caps in 2010, in a small basement on Ridley Place, following a redundancy and a related decision to go his own way. The basement would only seat ten to fifteen people and was always busy but didn’t allow any opportunity to build anything bigger. Eventually Joe decided it was time to open a second location.

“In 2016, we launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to open a second shop,” he explains, “and that's when the opportunity to open in our current location came up. It was already a coffee shop at the time, the people who were running it were kind of looking to move on, so we took it over and gradually changed things. I ran the two shops for probably nine months but most of our regulars just moved to the new location anyway so we decided to call it a day with the first shop.”

Like any hospitality business, the COVID pandemic hit Flat Caps hard, but Joe took the opportunity to start roasting his own coffee. “There was never really an intention to set up a roasting company, it was more for me to learn and develop my skills, but I realised that you can buy much better quality coffee, roast it yourself and have a better product for a much better price than if you buy it already roasted”

Flat Caps’ customers soon came to prefer their own brand to the others stocked and Joe made the decision to foreground it, eventually reaching the point where the roasting part of the operation became a separate venture as online sales and wholesales to other shops grew. Around this time, partly because of other changes in the company, Joe thought it might be time to split the two aspects of the company in two, with the roasting business becoming Roast Smith Coffee.

It seems people often didn’t really pick up on the name Flat Caps, or thought it was somehow a Peaky Blinders thing, and there were a lot of other coffee shops with similar names, so Joe decided to rename the café too, and after some deliberation opted for the charming Tiny Tiny.

“Tiny Tiny is a drink me and my brother created when we were kids.” Joe explains. “It was a bit of orange juice and hot water, a small drink that we could have before bed… I was trying to think of a name relevant to coffee or local history and it was really difficult, so in the end I just had to pick something that meant something to me. So – Tiny Tiny!”

The change is a gradual one – not least because Joe doesn’t want to trash Flat Caps branded cups and such – and no feathers seem to have been ruffled; in fact, people seem to find the story behind the new name charming, and the fact that Tiny Tiny is also one of the biggest coffee shops in the city, especially following the imminent expansion, lends it a certain irony.

The expansion is clearly an exciting but slightly daunting proposition for Joe and the shop. Basically, a large space behind the existing shop – as large again, approximately – became available and Tiny Tiny have taken it over to allow them to expand and develop.

“It's a challenge.”, Joe admits. “You know, ‘is it too big? Is it going to change the atmosphere?’ We want to make sure that it's comfortable and well-used, we don't want it to seem like an overflow, where you kind of get dumped in there if the rest of the shop is busy.”

Like everything else, the expansion will happen in stages, partly because of funding and planning permission, but also because Joe wants to learn from his customers what they want the space to be. “If everyone starts using it for something that we didn't expect, then we can adjust and move with that.”

There are plans to make the new section available for meetings, or larger bookings, and it means more room for buggies and eventually improved accessibility.  There’ll be a waiting area for take-out orders (an offering that’s also going to improve and expand), and probably a brew bar where specialised coffee that takes a more theatrical preparation process can be made while you perch on a stool.

The incremental changes affect all aspects of Tiny Tiny, from the much-improved wifi provision to what it can offer beyond the menu, which – including their remarkable Turkish eggs – won’t change a great deal in the near future. “We change the menu probably three to four times a year, we keep the popular things and we rotate the rest.”

Joe’s enthusiasm for the place and what to do with the new space is infectious and he’s cautiously full of ideas. Perhaps expanding the retail set-up. “Not just with brew kits and things but also some of the produce that we use that people really like - we make our own jam for the scones and the amount of times people ask where we get it from… so we could sell that. We make our own ice cream in the shop too. The advantage of having this extra space means we do have a lot of options.”

Flat Caps was always one of the best places to grab a coffee and a bite in town, with top notch ingredients and excellent service, plus an outside seated area that’s great on a warm day. It’s obvious that in shifting to Tiny Tiny, Joe Meagher has thought long and hard about how best to add to the experience in positive ways without ruining the things that make it great. Like the Turkish eggs! You should definitely pay them a visit and see what’s going on down in Carliol Square.

Tiny Tiny is open from 8am – 7pm Monday to Thursday, 8am to 4pm Friday – Sunday.

Main Image: Joe Meagher of Tiny Tiny