That was the week, that was

Well, we had planned to blog a bit more than we have but to say the least, this week has been busier than we expected.

I did get a chance to snap a quick video of us from one evening though to give you a sense of what a soup monger gets up to after a long day's toil in the soup mines.

A bag (with a bag)

This was taken at the end of the first day of Union's trading. It's the contents of the recycling bin we've provided for our customers to return our used takeaway packaging in - from day one, it's worked. I'm so incredibly happy with this. Things got better as the week went on, too - by Wednesday, we had to replace the binbag, and each day since then, I've been stuffing two binbags into our compost collection bin outside.

We're getting our food waste uplifted and composted by the Cyrenians. They'll collect twice per week, and they've made it really easy for us to do. Which is great, as it looks as if this is something which will run and run. And so it should. If a tiny start-up cafe can offer this service, so can anyone.

That's a gauntlet, Starbucks, Costa, Nero and the rest of you. A huge great clanging gauntlet.

Our first regular genius

Our first recycler

Really pleased to say that even on our first day that people were bringing their packaging back so we can recycle it. One marvellous person even brought her own Keep Cup in for us to fill with soup.

If you go to Forrest Road, you will dine (on soup)

Our first press coverage. Never before have so many of us huddled over one copy of the Edinburgh Evening News.

Special thanks to Lucy at Vegware for promoting us so tirelessly and to David at the paper for being interested in an Edinburgh business working with other Edinburgh businesses.

For those wanting to see behind the scenes, check out the album for the press shoot.

Signs and Portents

Today the window graphics and the sign were completed. Suddenly it feels like a cafe. Now when people walk past, they look in to see what's going on. We've even had people walk in to tell us how much they're looking forwards to coming in next week. The photo below was taken by Amy. I love the reflection of the classic old town skyline in it.

The long, dark lunch time of the soul

This is what it feels like to be Scotland's first soupmonger at 3am in the morning when your cafe's due to open in 5 days.

What's in a name?

I suspect that Union of Genius is not the name that immediately springs to mind when you think "soup café." It probably breaks most of the rules for what to name your business. We could have chosen from a million soup based puns. Souper Bowl, Enter the Soup Dragon, What soup doc?, Soups you Sir!, Soupercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Well not that last one as we couldn't have afforded the sign, but you get the idea.

So why Union of Genius? Well the simple answer is we like the name. Elaine likes being called Chief Genius, I like being Mr Genius and we even have a Minor Genius handing out flyers as I type. (I don't know if she noticed the clause in her contract about being called Minor Genius...)

The longer answer is that it represents how we are trying to work. The union is about the way individual components are stronger together. Soup is good. Bread is good. Soup and bread is a union of genius, if you ask us. It's also about trying to find the things we like the most and putting them all in one place. Whether it's brilliant cakes or gourmet marshmallows, the best coffee or tea, it's about putting all the best stuff together. Not everything that's good goes well together, marmite & sticky toffee pudding never work, so the art is finding out what does. That's the genius.

More than that, it's working with suppliers to source local, sustainable ingredients where we can; with packagers to make sure that the packaging we buy is properly degradable; and then encouraging our lovely customers (I do so hope we get customers as it'll get lonely in the shop without them and there's only so much soup I can eat by myself) to either recycle it themselves or bring it back to us to do it. We know that cynics will dismiss this as marketing but keeping stuff out of landfill has been a passion of Elaine's for a long time now. She still volunteers with Edinburgh Freegle to keep goods in use and we're hoping that we'll be able to expand on that in some way through the café next year.

It's also about more than just soup. We're only a small place, we'll only be able to get 7 or 8 people sitting in comfortably but there'll be books to read and a place to cross them. There'll be free wifi so you can tweet while you eat or poke while you dunk and so on. Another of our plans for next year is the "soup group:" just like a book group but for soup.

So the idea is that we're bringing together many different ingredients and, like a good soup, blending them into something that we hope others will find delightful.

And truth about the name? That would be saying; after all truth is a three-edged sword. But we both love a tiny bit of hyperbole from time to time.

Italian Stallion

One is big, red and makes you hurtle around like a maniac. The other's a Ducati ST2.

La Spaziale, the coffee maker that thinks it's a Ducati, is here.

Next step, training from Artisan Roast.

Soup with no gloop

The queen loved soup. She loved soup more than anything in the world except for the Princess Pea and the king. And because the queen loved it, soup was served in the castle for every banquet, every lunch and every dinner.
And what soup it was! Cook’s love and admiration for the queen and her palate moved the broth that she concocted from the level of mere food to a high art. (The Tale of Despereaux p.110)

Let's be clear about something. Elaine loves soup. She loves to cook it, to eat it and to share it with friends. Most of all she loves to feed it to her husband. Since we got married, teeth have been strictly optional for me. Decent gums and a long-handled spoon and I'm good to go.

So when we moved back to Edinburgh 2008 we were both looking forwards to rediscovering the great cafés, watering holes and hang-outs we loved 20 years ago. Most of all, Elaine was looking forwards to soup. Sure enough Edinburgh has great food in abundance. Except for the soup. Go to most cafes and you'll get a soup. Sometimes it'll be great (and we've had some seriously good soups) but usually it'll be cheap, probably served in a styrofoam cup and there'll be a nagging suspicion that it consists of left-overs. As Ottolenghi wrote recently,

Many cooks, including some serious chefs, treat the soup pot as a kind of culinary compost heap into which they chuck whatever happens to be lying around in the hope that it will miraculously be transformed.

Above all else, the magic ingredient that seems to be in 90% of the soups we've met in Edinburgh is gloop.

A sort of squishy, slightly gritty thickening agent made to bulk it out. It makes the kind of tomato soup that, when you look at it, it looks back at you. In a fight, you don't really know which one of you would win.

So we decided that we would make soup. Soup with no gloop. We would treat it as a food to be savoured. After all, soup is not just for a day, it's for life. This means that there would be no artificial thickeners, preservatives, colours or enhancers. No mass-produced concentrates, no cutting the dodgy bits off an old onion and hoping no one notices. No longer would soup be the cheap option on the menu, it would be the star. Our soups will never be padded out with corn starch, flour or suspicious purées. They will be made with vegetables, stock, herbs and spices and cuts of meat. And, of course, love.

Cook smiled “See? She said. “There ain’t a body, be it mouse or man, that ain’t made better by a little soup”  (The Tale of Despereaux p.233)

Full Circle

Full circle is the name we've given to our recycling and loyalty scheme. We've been working hard to make sure the soups we make use ingredients from sustainable and local sources but without paying attention to the packaging we risk becoming part of the problem. 

Part of the answer is the source of the packaging. All our materials come from Vegware; everything you'll get our soup in will compost within 12 weeks. Bowls, lids, carrier bags, even the spoons, they all taste good to the critters in the compost heap.

Thing is, although the packaging is designed to compost, if it ends up in landfill then it won't. Landfill conditions prevent composting. This means we have to take care of the other end too. If you are taking one of our soups home then we hope this shows that a) you have great taste and b) you will stick the packaging in your recycling. If you have a composter then it'll munch the containers quite happily. It's actually rather fun to watch...

Not everyone can do that so we've come up with a cunning plan to persuade you to bring the packaging back to us: free coffee. 

OK, not completely free but what we will do is to give you a stamp on your Regular Genius card. Ten stamps and the next coffee's on us. It rewards you for taking the time to bring the waste back rather than sticking it in the bin. It's not the world's most generous loyalty scheme, we're only just starting after all, but we think it's ingenious. 

There are other ways to get stamps. Bring in your own containers (bowls, cups whatever) and we'll give you a stamp there and then. We will be selling keep cups: fully reusable coffee cups. When you buy one you get a free coffee there and then and each time you use it you'll get a regular genius stamp. 

We'll tweak the scheme as it goes along but the basic idea is to close the circle. Hence the name. "Full circle" also refers to how we ended up here, but that's a story for another day.

Reportage

Very excitingly, I woke up this morning to find in my inbox that we have been recommended by Edinburgh Reporter as one of the five things to know today.Admittedly we came right after reports of a "fowl" smell but nothing's perfect.

Other than that, today has been probably the last day off before the last push starts. The window seat ought to be being made right now which means that Elaine can get busy with the sewing machine and we're testing out some more savoury mufflets on guinea pigs friends tonight. The soup kettles have arrived and Elaine will be off to the suppliers for a bunch of exotic spices.

This time next week the shop fit will be complete (all bar the snagging) and big red will have arrived from Italy ready to brew the first of, hopefully, many fine coffees. After many months of hunting down sites, planning and re-planning menus, trialling recipes and a fair amount of medicinal whisky, Union of Genius is now only days away.

The perfect package

Who would have thought that packaging could be so exciting? Not me but now we have bowls, labels and printed cups. 25 boxes worth, all from our friends at Vegware.

Part of the ethos of Union of Genius is something we call "full circle." We don't want our soup packaging ending up in landfill. For that reason our loyalty scheme is going to be based on bringing the packaging back but to complete the circle we need packaging that is produced sustainably and can be easily composted. That's where vegware comes in.

Even the labels can be composted.

So right now we have 11,000 printed cups and lids with bowls, cutlery, brown paper bags and napkins on the way. And nerves. Plenty of nerves...