Small St Espresso celebrates 10 years

“Hello, mate. The usual?”

It’s a Wednesday afternoon at Small St Espresso and manager Tasha Ebbs greets a regular popping in from the nearby crown court to grab a takeaway flat white. Another regular walks by on the other side of the road, this time unable to stop but waving to a friend inside.

When it opened in 2012, Small St Espresso was at the vanguard of speciality coffee in Bristol and it has remained there ever since. The cafe has barely changed in ten years which is testament to what co-owners Chris Chubb and John Drysdale set out to create.

It could all have been so different, for Chris and John only spotted 23 Small Street in the Old City while viewing a former newsagent directly opposite, which is now being used as a store for the Commercial Rooms pub.

The pair had met when Chris started working in the brasserie owned by John’s mum and dad, Kondi in Henleaze, and soon hatched plans of creating the kind of cafe that Chris had frequented when he lived and worked in Melbourne and east London.

Small St Espresso was previously Brunch sandwich shop – photo: Chris Chubb

The inside of what is now Small St Espresso – photo: John Drysdale

A sign for Holdcroft & Co shoe shop was discovered in the window opening onto the passageway between Small Street and Broad Street – photo: Chris Chubb

Small St Espresso before the wall was knocked through to what was originally a cash machine to create more seating – photo: John Drysdale

Small St Espresso in December 2022 just ahead of its tenth anniversary – photo: Martin Booth

Sitting in one of the few bits of the cafe that has changed – an enlarged seating area created by knocking through a brick wall into a room that used to contain a cash machine – Chris said that the original aim of Small St was to serve the best coffee in a relaxed environment.

“Back then, there weren’t a lot of places to go for a speciality or third wave coffee, so initially our aim was to create somewhere that we would want to go because there was nowhere we could go in Bristol,” said Chris.

The pair wondered whether there was even a ‘coffee scene’ in the city or enough people to sustain their business. But they were not first, however, in introducing speciality coffee to Bristol, crediting the former Wild In Heart on Broad Street with that accolade, that opened a few months before Small St.

Opening a cafe meant opening the smallest and least risky place they could, and it took a year of being open, with trade slowly creeping up, for Chris and John to appreciate that they had a business which worked.

Chris, Tasha and John will all be working in the cafe on its tenth birthday on Monday – photo: Martin Booth

Clifton Coffee have roasted Small St’s house blend from day one, and they also still use some of their original food suppliers including pastries Hart’s Bakery (celebrating ten years at Temple Meads this month); cakes from Exeter’s Exploding Bakery; and Bristol’s own Bosh, makers of one of the most popular items on the menu, the toasted banana bread.

Chris said that Small St “is what we wanted to create. The best thing is that this is the initial idea and we have perfectly created it. Some things don’t need to change.”

You can almost count the number of staff that Small St has had over the last decade on two hands, with both Chris and John full of praise for all of their teams, which include Jack Hudspith and Kate Evans who worked as baristas here and who have gone on to open New Cut next to the M Shed.

“We were lucky to open at a time when loads of things were happening all over Bristol,” John added. “Food journalism in the city was changing a bit as well. For the first time that I had ever experienced you would travel around the city to find places. We would have people visiting us from miles away because they had seen a tweet that you should go for a coffee here.”

The growing coffee and food scene in Bristol over the last decade definitely means that it is now much more difficult for new openings to stand out from the crowd, but Small St remains almost completely unchanged and long may it continue.

Small St Espresso, coming soon in December 2012 – photo: John Drysdale

Outside seating for a Make Sunday Special event in 2013 – photo: John Drysdale

The cafe now has outside seating from 10am each day thanks to the pedestrianisation of the Old City – photo: Martin Booth

Small St manager Tasha, who has worked here for six years, is full of praise for the cafe’s two co-owners, who since Small St have gone on to open Little Victories in Wapping Wharf and Small Goods in Temple Quay.

“John and Chris are two of the most decent humans I have ever had the pleasure of knowing, and to work for them in the cafe they created a decade ago is a point of pride,” Tasha said.

“While the customers I get to chat to as I make coffee and my various brilliant colleagues over the years keep me excited to go back to Small St each morning, it is most probably the generosity and care the two lads have shown as employers that has truly held me here for such a long time, something that is also reflected across their three sites.

“Their spirit and passion motivates me daily, and the time and energy they give to both customer and employee is a complete inspiration to me.”

Join Chris, John and Tasha on Monday to celebrate Small St Espresso’s tenth birthday with coffee at 2012 prices and plenty of celebratory cake

Main photo: Martin Booth

Read next:

• My Bristol Favourites: Chris Chubb
• My Bristol Favourites: Tasha Ebbs
• Celebrating ten years of Hart’s Bakery at Temple Meads
• What are Bristol’s best cafes?

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