Like a growing number of residents in this most tea-drinking of nations, Will Shakesheff enjoys his coffee. So much so that a few years back he sold off his family’s Mercedes Benz dealership to sell the black gold from the back of a bike outside William Shakespeare’s house in Stratford-Upon-Avon.

Yet these are no ordinary bikes (and apparently, no ordinary coffee either). “I was in the car trade and wanted to do something less strenuous; so I came up with the idea for these bikes”, says Shakesheff. The bikes in question appeared on the BBC's The Apprentice, and are, like the coffee, ‘fair-trade’. In fact, from the fair-trade cotton and hemp in the staff’s clothing, to the bamboo stirrers, locally-sourced muffins, and free coffee for those bringing their cups back, every effort has been made to ensure the company’s credentials. As Shakesheff says, Bikecaffe is “an environmental and eco-friendly, no carbon footprint company bringing delicious coffee to everybody.”

Compared to his larger corporate competitors, who’ve been able to put down strong roots in virgin coffee territory, he puts the success down to a number of factors: “People were fed up queuing and fed up with the quality and cost as well.” Business outside Shakespeare’s house was so good that Shakesheff’s mind turned to franchising last year. And he’s been able to make the move without, to this day, having any funding. “I didn’t need it”, he says. “I wasn’t planning to franchise!”

The handmade bikes already have a strong presence in the Midlands, and have seen success in a range of locations: There are seven operating in environmentally-aware Cornwall, and interest from India, Turkey and France. And while the term barista might still be foreign jargon in British English, all franchisees "are properly trained in coffee making”, insists Shakesheff: “Brits are waking up to coffee.”