Jake’s Coffee Box

A cute novelty “coffee shop” if there ever was one. The offerings are as tiny in number as the property they are made in – although sufficient if like me you get irritated with establishments trying to please everyone and every taste – but it’s the ingenuity behind the shop that caught my interest.

Jake’s Coffee Box is exactly that, a coffee “shop” inside the iconic British red telephone box. Situated just round the corner from Victoria Square in Birmingham, the idea is so simple that you’d wonder why no one had done this till now.

The coffee, a Flat White, with a hint of froth on top – enough to give me a milky mustache (The Got Milk? kind) – and a subtle coffee taste as it should be in this case. Being a non-coffee drinker – except for cold coffee – this for me was as good as hot coffee gets.

Even with a limited selection of snacks on offer the Baked Potato Bomb caught my eye primarily because of the name and secondly because it did look deliciously good. In a nutshell, the Baked Potato Bomb was your everyday Aaloo Samosa only it wasn’t shaped liked one and wasn’t greasy having been baked and not fried. The outside nevertheless had a beautiful yellow-golden colour with a moderate crunch – unlike the often found slightly hard shell of a samosa – but extremely flaky and filled to the max with Potatoes and julienne carrots – giving the Potato Bomb a somewhat slightly sweet taste. The spice level was to my liking – low – and although in the end I technically only had a samosa – nothing new – but it was a damn good one.

In between bites I had a quick chat with Jake as well – who came across as friendly and genuinely interested in providing a good product – and I have to praise him on opening his little coffee shop right across from Starbucks – it takes guts.

Jake’s Coffee Box is all about the little guys, the independents, the underdogs; everyone loves them and everyone wants them to succeed. What’s encouraging is that this is not a hobby and it already shows creativity and passion to be different and do something distinctive.

This could possibly be the start of a new trend. If Jake’s Coffee Box continues to do well and with a little limelight thrown in for good measure, what’s stopping the others from making the most of the iconic red telephone boxes across the nation; a bookshop maybe, a stationery shop, or a pop-up clothes show. The alternatives are, as they say… endless.