ABOUT US
We're Sophie and Fran, the owners of Cortado Café.
Fran is Argentinian and Sophie is British, but we actually met in Cusco, Peru when Fran was running a backpackers hostel and Sophie was backpacking through South America. That was back in 2012 and we've been together ever since.
We lived together in Cusco for a year before moving to Fran's home city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and finally making the big move over to the UK in 2017.
If you've been in to the café then you'll probably know Fran's face, he does all the day to day running of the café. You might not know Sophie as she doesn't generally work in the café but she does all the creative bits - the design, logo, menus, window displays, social media, etc. - as well as the occasional sewing.
We love to travel (this is a pic from our honeymoon in 2019, where we took the trains through Europe to Italy) and we enjoy trying new foods in new places. It's great to be able to share a bit of Argentinian/South American culture with you all through the café.
It's been a long time dream of ours to start our own business and Cortado is the realisation of that dream.
SUSTAINABILITY
Here at Cortado we're conscious about our impact on the environment, and make sustainable choices where we can.
All our energy is provided by green energy suppliers Bulb.
We work with sustainable coffee suppliers Easy Jose.
In an effort to reduce single use plastic consumption, we don't sell any drinks in plastic packaging.
All of our takeaway packaging is from Decent Packaging and is fully compostable.
We encourage the use of reusable coffee cups, and if you bring your own cup or container you can get a discount on your order. We even sell our own branded reusable cups, made from single use paper cups, by Circular&Co- find out more on their website.
Most of our furniture was sourced second hand, the majority of it from local charity shops and vintage stores.
Within our kitchen we use reusable containers as much as possible, limiting our use of cling film and foil.
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LOCAL SUPPLIERS
We like to use local suppliers as much as possible, and support some of the other amazing small business in our area. Here are just some of our local suppliers:
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Easy Jose: Ethically and sustainably producing coffee, supporting small communities in the Amazon rainforest. Find out more on their website
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Bertinet Bakery supplies their amazing bread for our sandwiches and brunch.
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Larkhall Butchers: The meat for our speciality Argentinian empanadas is provided by this award winning butchers.
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Bath Soft Cheese Co. supply their award winning Bath Blue cheese for our blue cheese empanadas.
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Scoop Wholefoods providing plastic free goods such as seeds, nuts, and other cupboard supplies.
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All our cakes are made by us or locally by small independent businesses: Mylk, Alice's Cakes and Baked by Fabi.
