Wyevale Garden Centres has won a major award for its coffee shop concept, Coffee Grounds, first introduced last year.

The concept won the ‘Best Restaurant or Bar in another space’ UK category, at the Restaurant and Bar Design Awards, which attracted 1000 entries from more than 70 countries. They are the only awards in the world dedicated to recognising the care and consideration given to the design of food and beverage spaces.

The judges included leading architects, designers, brand directors and chefs from all over the world.

The Coffee Ground concept was launched in September 2014 to link a wholesome shopping experience with a high quality food and beverage offer. All the coffee is organic, Fairtrade and Rainforest Alliance-certified, using only handpicked beans.

WGC is the only coffee shop provider in the UK to roll out micro roasting, using automation designed in house for a 1kg roaster. “It means we can roast in small batches throughout the day, filling the air with wonderful aromas and adding the theatre of roasting to the heart of our operation,” said Jason Danciger, food and beverage director at WGC.  The unique pateneted technology ensures a consistent roast set by a master roaster to the company’s own profile, to give an outstanding ‘crema’ (creamy head on the surface). “We have the exclusivity on this new technology but know that soon every single coffee shop on the high street is likely to follow us,” Mr Danciger said.

WGC sends its used coffee grounds to recyclers, who use them to produce article such as tables, cake stands and garden compost.

Mr Danciger said the award was testament to WGC’s growing credibility in the leisure industry and is recognition of its efforts to strategically diversify the business to cater to a growing customer base. “We are proud of this achievement and of how far our award-winning Coffee Ground has come since its initial conception. We are delighted that not only is the quality of our coffee praised but also that our design consideration and our innovative use of space has been recognised.”

Earlier this year Coffee Ground won the Menu Innovation and Development Awards (MIDAS) for the best New Restaurant Concept of the year.

Garden Trade News’s Greatest Awards, supported by the HTA, recently recognised WGC’s Food & Beverage head office team as the ‘Greatest Garden Centre Team’ of 2015.