The Journey From Cow to Cup

Here at HatHats we make 175,000+ drinks for our customers annually! Have you ever wondered where all this milk comes from? Well, our curious team did, so we sent them on a little mission to find out…

On the 7^th September 2021 we sent our lovely Charlotte (Reculver Manager) and Lauren (Assistant Manager) along to Hinxden Farm Diary to see the process from the cow to cup.

They started off with a bit of a shock to their system. Rather than their usual 8am start at Reculver, they set off at 5am for Hinxden Farm Diary, Cranbrook, Kent just in time for the first milking of the day, that took place at 6am.

So it was off to the milking shed, where they were up close and personal with the whole milking process. The system was organised and very hygienic although, Lauren was a little gutted she wasn’t greeted by a little wooden stool ready to hand milk the cows the old-fashioned way.

From here, they followed the milk straight from the cow through the pipe to the pasteurisation room, the final stage before being bottled. Before heading into the room, it was dress up time! Charlotte and Lauren were fitted with some very fashionable hair nets, mask and white lab coats, basically Charlotte's usual attire for a Saturday night out!

No corners were cut when it came to the bottling process, each bottle of milk was hand filled with the top screwed on. Ready to head straight to the van for fresh delivery to all their customers including our Reculver outlet that day!

Then came the part of the day both Charlotte and Lauren had been looking forward to the most, meeting all the cows including their calf’s (one taking a liking to Charlotte's sleeve). They sat down in a field with numerous cows who came over and say hello. They were friendly, all with their own personalities, it was the perfect ending to a lovely day... however, Chris our videographer may have taken a seat in some cow poo, but it was all part of the experience and a laughable memory.

We would love to give a huge thank you to Dee and Richard for being so welcoming and showing us around their amazing business. We saw so many similarities between HatHats and Hinxden Farm Diary; it is a family business, and always growing and developing, with their customers (and cows) at the heart of what they do. Because of this, we are lucky to have Hinxden provide us with our milk daily to be able to produce the quality of coffee we as a business are proud of.

You can also see our journey from cow to cup as we filmed the day. Click HERE to watch our udderly fantastic day, and don’t forget to pop along to any of our outlets to try the milk fresh for yourself!