Matt’s Journey at Tate: Crafting Coffee with Purpose
Coffee by Tate is the Tate gallery’s in-house brand dedicated to sourcing, roasting and serving ethically sourced, specialty coffees and beverages which align with the gallery’s commitment to sustainability and quality. Since 2022, they’ve been serving our 65% and 75% Hot Chocolate Buttons, 45% Hot Chocolate Powder, and 55% Milk Chocolate in their 10 sites across the Tate Modern, Tate Britain and Tate St Ives.
We wanted to explore what exactly it is about Islands Chocolate which keeps us on the menu at these iconic locations, and caught up with Matt Jusic-Woodley, Hot Beverage Manager at Coffee by Tate to find why.
Matt Jusic-Woodley has been at Coffee by Tate since May 2023, bringing nearly a decade of coffee expertise to the gallery's renowned cafés. His journey into coffee began with a move to London in 2015, initially aimed at a career in music, but quickly pivoting to a life-long obsession with coffee when he started working as barista at TAP. It was here that he met Ghily, the head of Coffee by Tate, whose leadership and passion eventually brought them back working together in 2022.
Sustainability is at the heart of what Matt and his team are working towards. They are currently engaging with the Sustainable Restaurant Association, marking the beginning of a long journey toward recognition for their efforts. When we spoke this October, Matt revealed a bold change he’d recently made across Tate sites, eliminating takeaway cups from the galleries. This shift aligns with Tate’s sustainability goals and responds to the reality of serving coffee in an art space where drinks can’t be taken into exhibitions. “In a good year, the bar could do around 200,000 drinks, which equates to nearly half a ton of waste,” he explains. With the new reusable HuskeeCups, Matt aims to foster a more responsible drinking culture, allowing patrons to enjoy their beverages in a way that respects both the art and the environment.
“We made it our mission to buy equally from men and women producers”
Since 2011, Tate have also actively addressed gender inequality in coffee production, where women make up a significant portion of the workforce yet own only a small fraction of the farms. “We made it our mission to buy equally from men and women producers, but we actually ended by skewing more heavily toward female owned farms” Matt shares. By focusing their purchasing on female producers, they aimed for a 70% representation and surpassed that, achieving 76% last year. “I think there was even a point this year where most of the standard gallery espressos were all from female producers which is the first time that's happened in a 12 month window” he adds.
“There are so many steps through farming, processing and transporting coffee which require a huge workforce, and we try to build collaborative, long-term relationships with our producers. There are producers we’ve been buying from for up to ten years.” Matt cites a key partnership is with a female-led cooperative in Colombia, named Igualdad Mujeres Hombres Association (IMH), which translates to “equality between women and men.” They’ve been sourcing from IMH 2018 but are about to start serving their most delicious coffee from them to date. “That could obviously come down to environmental issues and a general good crop but has also likely been positively impacted by our relationship with them. The more money you can put into these things, the better the production is going to be.”
These long-term relationships with producers are not just about numbers; they foster a deeper connection and result in improvements to the quality of the coffee itself. On IMH, he adds “You can see how much the quality has changed from then to now.”
This dedication to ethical sourcing parallels our own ethos at Islands Chocolate, where we focus on developing and investing in our own farms in the Caribbean and nurturing lasting sourcing partnerships with our select cocoa farming partner. Through the development and data management of our 394-strong gene bank in St Vincent, we were able to best identify the most sustainable and flavourful variety of cocoa to grow across our farms, resulting in the award-winning flavours enjoyed today across our chocolates.
“THE CHOCOLATES ARE DELICIOUS AND THEY’RE A JOY TO WORK WITH”
Our relationship with Coffee by Tate pre-dates Matt’s role there, so we wanted to understand his impression of our Hot Chocolates and what has kept them on his menus. “Islands ethos and ethics in sourcing and processing align with our own. You really care and it speaks volumes in the product you craft. The chocolates are delicious and they’re a joy to work with.” Matt’s personal favourite? The 75% dark.
“We get a lot of customers who might be trying speciality coffee, tea and hot chocolate for the first time, and the feedback on Islands is always amazing. Customers will come back to us to tell us how they notice the fruity flavours. It’s not just chocolate for the sake of being chocolate. It’s not just going to taste like cocoa. I can talk about the variance in flavour between the 65% and 75% and customers can actually taste this.”
“A lot of people who come to work with us as baristas do so initially from a passion for coffee, but tasting our teas and hot chocolates is a real eureka experience for them. They realise there’s so much more to the job than just coffee.”
Much more than coffee indeed. Coffee by Tate’s unique relationship with the art opens the door to innovative and insightful collaborative projects. Matt reflects on one particularly memorable project, which involved teaming up with a ceramicist Atelier Jessie, to create a run of limited-edition, hand-thrown mugs to celebrate the arrival of Philip Guston at Tate Modern. The mug design was inspired by Philip Guston’s painting, Cup, 1972, and this image was licensed for use on a speciality coffee bag, to be sold alongside it. “That’s probably the best example of the depths you can go to in a collaboration,” Matt reflects, illustrating how they went beyond conventional partnerships to create something meaningful. This unique approach to collaboration showcases the creativity that emerges when art intersects with specialty coffee, allowing visitors to engage with both art and beverage in a new way.
Working at Tate has also fostered Matt’s relationship with the art himself, citing Olafur Eliason’s exhibitions has his personal favourite, both for the fun and interactivity of the installations themselves, and for the environmental message they carry.
When probed on where his passion for coffee truly began, Matt recalls that “one cup that changed everything” back in 2015, when he was working at Tap. “It was a Kenya from Kiriani… that was the one. When someone tells you ‘This is going to taste like almost like tomatoes’, and you think there’s no way, but then you drink it. It was a real transformative experience for me.” His current favourites are a filter coffee called Gito they recently had on the menu at Tate, and an “Aquiaras Esperanza, Costa Rican from SkyLark coffee. It’s amazing, just like drinking sunny delight” he enthuses.
“My boy, loyle carner”
Looking forward, Matt’s excited about an upcoming limited release of an anaerobic process coffee from Brazil that he describes as extraordinary. “I’ve tasted it, and it is absolutely delicious. We managed to secure the only two sacks of it while Ghily was on a recent visit there and it’ll be across the gallery as a filter and on as a guest espresso at the Corner which is really exciting. Like all Tate coffees, it’s complemented by beautiful wintery artwork, a painting called Snow Falls on Exmoor, 1939, by John A. Park. We can’t wait to try it!
Anyone that often finds themselves sipping the time away in a coffee shop knows that music can be pivotal to the cafe experience. We wanted to know what Matt’s dream soundtrack would be for the Corner Café? “My Boy, Loyle Carner.”
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