December is a month that absolutely flies by here at The Coffee Can, so before it takes hold and sees us through to a new year, let’s spend some time look back on what an absolutely jam-packed November we had.
Pumpkins were slowly turning into baubles, group chats were filled with discussions as to which takeaway cups would be the Christmas takeaway cups for 2024, and laughter was had day in day out as the evenings seemed to appear earlier and earlier each day.
For our staff, November had some spectacular moments. We want to wish an absolutely massive congratulations to Beth (from our Secrett’s site) who got ENGAGED this month! This is the first time a team member has gotten engaged whilst working with us at The Coffee Can, so you can only begin to imagine how many squeals and exclaims of excitement there were to hear the story of how it happened over and over. We also had Phoebe’s birthday! She’s one of our newest team members, and she has fit right in here with us all. So much so, she chose to spend her birthday with us! Totally not that she forgot to book it off… no, no.
Bonfire night spectacular
You might remember from the end of October when Amy went completely out-of-action having sprained ligaments in her spine. Ouch.
It was a time which brought around a lot of stress for a whole multitude of reasons, for us it was the fact Amy was in excruciating pain and unable to walk for a few days. But in Amy’s eyes, the biggest point of concern was that it was just three days until our biggest date in the diary – bonfire night.
Some SOS calls and a plan B put together swiftly, Farnham Fireworks turned out to be one of our biggest success stories to date. Up in Farnham Park, we had an absolute dream team working together to execute one of the slickest forms of service we’ve done – keeping thousands of attendees caffeinated and warm with hot chocolates. We did the maths, we sold a hot chocolate every single 30 seconds for the entire duration of the event. Add in coffee, teas and cold drinks, we were off the scale. The biggest thank you possible goes out to John, Ben, Caitlin, Laura and Maisie who worked together to make the event run smoothly without Amy there. You all know Amy, you know she was absolutely gutted to not be there and had just about as much FOMO as you can fathom, but she’s well rested and back to it now.
Farnham antiques market
We aren’t working chronologically here, but that’s because it feels right that we cover all grounds that don’t involve the Chr*stmas word in November first, before transitioning as the season does towards all the holly, jingle bells and fake snow.
This month, the Farnham Antiques market moved from West Street to the Central Carpark, giving stallholders much more room for visitors to ramble around the market. We’re very thankful that the market organisers thought about the vendors and visitors need for some caffeination, because they asked us to come along with our mobile coffee van and keep the coffee flowing away from the high street. It was a seriously sunny November day, and the event was a huge success.
St Hilary’s Christmas market
Yep, it begun. November saw us begin to attend the first Christmas Markets of the year. And honestly, they were absolutely marvellous! Who says that Christmas has to be confined to the latter half of December? If there is joy to be had, we are all for seeing the festive season in earlier.
It’s been really wonderful to connect with our Godalming community this year. Although our business begun in Farnham, we’ve now had our Secrett’s Coffee Shop for over a year. In that time, we’ve built friendships and bonds with our close community, and we really do feel a sense that we are becoming one of the locals.
Therefore, we were so excited to book in several Godalming Christmas Markets this year. The first of which was for St Hilary’s school, where we saw so many of our regular faces from Secrett’s. There were over the moon to see their favourite gingerbread biscuits had arrived in their school playground, and the parents seemed pleased that a decent cup of coffee was in sight between endless rounds on the tombola.
Farnham Christmas light switch on
We also returned to our old stomping ground for the official Farnham Christmas Light Switch on of 2024. An event we’ve attended year in, year out, and love time after time.
It’s always special to return to Gostrey’s as we spent so many years befriending all the locals who walk through daily. Because this event starts earlier in the day, we have enough time to see all the regulars going amongst their daily routine and get to have a proper catch up! Then as darkness set (at about 4pm… thanks daylight savings time), the countdown begun, the fake snow poured from the sky, and we officially heard our first Christmas songs of 2024.
Dhan Tamang latte art evening
To wrap the month up, we had a pretty special evening. We’re going to talk about it more in another blog post, but we were INCREDIBLY fortunate to have Dhan Tamang (UK Latte art champion and author) come by to teach us some of his latte art skills.
Amy and Dhan worked together way back when, and Dhan has since gone to be a coffee consultant all around the globe, working with brands to develop their coffee. He’s a barista champion, and published books on latte art – he’s a very big deal.
Were we up to his level by the end of the night? Absolutely not, but in our defence he’s spent decades perfecting his skills. We did, however, take home some fantastic tips and tricks which we are practicing daily to really elevate our coffee game.