Obituaries

Paddy Bewley obituary: ‘God of coffee’ who took family business to new heights

Businessman added ‘incredible’ value to business and industry, says Bewley’s current MD

Paddy Bewley had a dry wit and was strongly committed to his family. Photograph: Gareth Chaney Collins

Sat Jan 8 2022 - 05:04

Born: June 28th, 1944
Died: December 26th, 2021

Paddy Bewley, who has died aged 77, was the last member of his family directly involved in running the cafe and coffee business that bears their name.

He worked for the company for 53 years, including after it was taken over by Campbell Catering, to become part of the Campbell Bewley Group Limited. Paddy Bewley's lasting professional achievement was starting and developing the coffee supplying end of the Bewley business.

This was so successful that Bewley’s coffee and tea is now served in more than 4,000 hospitality and retail outlets across Ireland, despite the decline of Bewley’s renowned Dublin cafes. The company also expanded into the United Kingdom and United States, operating coffee-roasting facilities in both jurisdictions, and supplying tea and coffee to multiple hospitality outlets.

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Bewley carved out a whole new area of operation – supplying coffee to third-party outlets in the hospitality sector, starting with Arnotts store in Dublin and Trinity College

Behind Paddy Bewley’s business acumen lay a personal commitment to Quakerism, a belief system within the Christian, nonconformist religious tradition with which the wider Bewley family has long been associated.

The faith’s guiding principles of non-violence, tolerance and kindness to others were ones by which Bewley lived his life – a fact reflected in messages of condolences after his death, the majority of which contained the word “gentleman” in reference to his character and personality.

Patrick Bewley, who was always known as Paddy, was born June 1944 and grew up in Knocksedan House, a farm near Swords, Co Dublin, run by his father Joe. The family had a strong association with Rathgar on Dublin’s southside and Bewley was enrolled initially in Rathgar Junior, a Quaker school there, and later went to Newtown, a Quaker secondary school in Waterford.

While attending Rathgar Junior, the young Bewley stayed several nights a week with his maternal grandmother, Susan Bewley, when she lived on Rostrevor Road in Rathgar, not far from the school.

Susan, then an elderly matriarch of the family and the daughter of missionaries who worked in Madagascar, was to have a lasting impact on the boy.

She "was a huge influence" on me, he told Maurice O'Keeffe in a January 2019 interview recorded for the Irish Life and Lore oral history website. "She'd read from the bible and you'd sing hymns – All Things Bright and Beautiful, that sort of stuff. She was a caring sort of person . . . She was the ethical one."

Bewley began his working life studying accountancy with Stokes Brothers and Pim (latterly morphed into KPMG) but left after three years. “It didn’t like me and I didn’t like it and I left,” he explained ruefully some years later. Aged 21, he joined the family business.

The Bewley family association with Ireland went back to 1700 and a migration of Quakers from Cumberland in England, to Co Offaly. The association with coffee dated from the mid-19th century and a daring scheme to import more than 10,000 chests of tea from China.

By the early 20th century, a business selling tea, coffee and sugar, initially from a shop on Sycamore Alley in Dublin’s Temple Bar and later South Great George’s Street, grew into a chain of cafes, the flagship of which was Bewley’s Oriental Cafe on Grafton Street, which opened in 1927.

The business was created largely by Ernest Bewley, husband of Susan, of Danum in Rathgar (now The High School) and, when he died in 1932, his three sons, Victor, Alfred and Joe, took over.

Victor (later renowned for his work on behalf of Irish Travellers) ran the business, Alfred baked the cakes for which the cafes were famous and Joe ran the Knocksedan farm of prize-winning Jersey cows (the first in Ireland), providing unpasteurised milk and cream for the bakery and cafes.

After his abortive foray into accounting, in 1965 Bewley began working behind the counter making coffee in Bewley’s Westmoreland Street outlet. After six months, he went front of house, selling coffee to customers.

“I thought that was terrific. I really enjoyed that,” he told O’Keeffe.

Soon, he assumed the role of coffee buyer for the whole business, dealing with a brokerage in London under the guidance of managing director Victor Bewley.

It wasn’t long before he was managing Westmoreland Street and, from 1977 to 2003, he served as managing director after the retirement of Victor.

Leading the business, Bewley proved to be an innovator. He carved out a whole new area of operation – supplying coffee to third-party outlets in the hospitality sector, starting with Arnotts store in Dublin and Trinity College.

The hook for corporate customers was to supply them free pour-over coffee filter equipment . . . if they bought coffee supplies from Bewley’s. This grew into the company giving such customers sophisticated coffee filter machines, made in the Netherlands and the US, and costing €1,500 each, if they bought at least eight cases of coffee a month.

The profit margin on the coffee was so good it paid the company to provide the machines for free. While the cafes are now gone (with the exception of Grafton Street), the company today has a turnover of some €170 million.

“That food service business now is what Bewley’s have – in the UK, America and Ireland and it’s all just supplying coffee and tea to the food service outlets,” he told O’Keeffe in his oral history interview.

Bewley innovated in other ways. In 1996, he signed the company up to purchase Fairtrade coffee only, continuing the family’s socially conscious tradition by guaranteeing producers and their communities in Latin America and Africa a minimum price for their beans, irrespective of market fluctuations.

In 2008, the company’s roastery and headquarters in Dublin became 100 per cent carbon neutral.

Jason Doyle, current managing director of Bewley’s, said: “The value Paddy added over his lifetime, not only to our business but to the wider Irish coffee industry is incredible. Anyone who is anyone in the Irish coffee industry has come through the Paddy Bewley school of coffee.”

Among them is Bobby Kerr, founder of Insomnia Coffee and a former colleague when he worked in Bewley’s.

“He was the ‘god’ of coffee and made a massive contribution,” said Kerr. “He was also my dear friend and mentor. He was gentle, witty and sharp and I loved him dearly.”

Bewley lived a full and energetic life.

Craig Bewley says he thinks his father would like to be remembered 'as a true gentleman who put other people before himself and was thoughtful'.

He played rugby for Old Wesley, lining out for the seconds as a centre or winger, and, while not renowned for his catching ability, once he had the ball, he was fast with it. He ran with the Djouce Joggers and Belfield Bashers, and was a life-long skier, slaloming black runs in the Swiss Alps.

In 1969, he married Cork-born Shirley Dagg, then working at Lisney estate agents. They lived in Dalkey for more than 50 years and had two sons, Simon and Craig.

A quiet but considered man, Bewley had a dry wit and was strongly committed to his family. In his latter years, before illness took its toll, he built an adventure play area, complete with a zipline and trampoline, in his back garden for his grandchildren.

His faith was central. He supported, among others, the Hospice Foundation and the Mendicity Institution, Dublin’s oldest working charity which seeks to help the homeless and the marginalised. He was a blood donor for more than 40 years and, when he died after a long illness, he donated his body to medical science, to the benefit of students and researchers.

In due course, the family will receive his ashes from Trinity College school of medicine. As per his wish, they will eventually be scattered over the slopes in Switzerland.

Craig Bewley says he thinks his father would like to be remembered “as a true gentleman who put other people before himself and was thoughtful”.

Patrick (Paddy) Bewley is survived by his wife Shirley and their sons, Simon and Craig; his grandchildren Alannah, Kate, Amy, Joshua and twins Eli and Jacob; his brothers, Michael, Roger and sister Claire.

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