About Us

Debonair Tea Company is run by Kent couple, Phil and Louisa Johnson. Tired of seeing both good and poor quality tea served badly, we believed it was possible to source, create and serve high quality loose leaf teawithout pretence and set upon our mission to make exceptional tea a daily pleasure.

Initially, our plan was to create a pop-up tea bar and personally serve our own teas and blends but we were soon getting requests to retail our products online and supply other food businesses - requiring a prompt re-write of the business plan!

From true start-up beginnings and a limited budget, we have now created and sourced over 20 delicious yet honestly priced unique teas and infusions with more in careful development. Louisa has also proven her craft, knowledge and love of tea with formal tea sommelier accreditation – the first person to achieve this standard with the UK Tea Academy.

Our name is not only inspired by our high-quality teas and infusions but also by our 1968 Bedford Debonair CA van, which we are converting into a mobile tea bar (Still..! One commercial unit, a dog and a baby later...!)

This blog was originally set up for updates on our mobile teabar transformation which it will continue to do when this work resumes in 2018.

www.debonairtea.co.uk

Monday, 26 May 2014

MEET DEBBY...

Introducing Debby, our 1968 Bedford Debonair Dormobile, soon to be mobile purveyor of hot beverages.

Debby isn't working so she needed a pick-me-up.

Here she is looking excited upon her collection from an underground Hackney carpark in March 2014...

A little background on this beauty and her Dormobile family:

An iconic vehicle of the 1960s, the Bedford Dormobile was a product of the collaboration between Vauxhall and Folkestone coach builders, Martin Walter.

Martin Walter, now Dormobile Ltd, were originally founded in 1773. At the dawn of the motoring age, they embarked bespoke coachwork on marques including Daimler, Rolls Royce and Mercedes-Benz.

Some time in the 1950s, bosses at Martin Walter noticed the trend of market traders putting cushions in their vans to take their families on outings. Taking advantage of their strong relationship with Vauxhall, Martin Walter used the CA Bedford to create a new form of multi-purpose vehicle.

For motorists, a big advantage of these conversions was that they were classified as a van rather than as a car, meaning that no purchase tax was payable.

A number of combinations followed but the first Bedford CA based Dormobile motorhome, complete with a gas stove, a sink, cupboards and seats which converted into beds, appeared in 1957.

While the Martin Walter Dormobile conversion was applied to several other marques including Volkswagen and Land Rover, the Dormobile name remains indelibly linked to Bedford. The Debonair was a later CA model and the full evolution of this range can be viewed here:
http://www.dormobile.org.uk/Bedford_CA.htm.

Work to restore and re-fit Debby began in earnest in April; more updates to follow soon.
Posted by at
Labels:

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)