How Your Morning Cuppa Ends Up Feeding Manchester

Ever wonder what happens to those coffee grounds after they’ve done the hard work of getting you through a Monday morning? Spoiler: they’re not off to the great compost heap in the sky. They’re actually off on a proper Mancunian adventure – and unlike most of us, they don’t even have to brave the M60 to get there.

Our wormeries are fed via pedal power!

Here at Brewcycle, we’ve been scratching our heads (and occasionally our noses – spent grain is pungent stuff) trying to work out the most sustainable way to collect all those lovely coffee grounds from our brilliant café mates across town. Turns out, the answer was whizzing past our community garden gate the whole time, wearing high-vis and looking suspiciously chipper for someone cycling up Brantingham Road.

Enter our marvellous friends at Chorlton Bike Deliveries. While we were faffing about trying to borrow a van that actually starts, these legends were already collecting surplus food across South Manchester on their cargo bikes – you know, the ones that look like a wheelbarrow had a baby with a penny-farthing. They’re saving tonnes of carbon, which is frankly showing off, but we’ll allow it because they’re dead sound.

Now, here’s the beautiful bit: Chorlton Bikes swing by our partner cafés, load up those nitrogen-rich coffee grounds, and pedal them straight to our community garden space. No diesel fumes, no traffic jams, no driver complaining about the lack of parking. Just pure, pedal-powered circular economy in action. It’s enough to make you want to burst into song... though we won’t.

Once those grounds arrive, our brilliant Brewcyclers – many of whom are rebuilding their lives after facing barriers to employment – get to work mixing them with food waste from the onsite care, garden waste and mushroom growing substrate. It’s like a match made in heaven, if heaven smelled vaguely of a morning after a proper brew. This magic mixture feeds our worm bins and mushroom farms, creating compost so rich it practically writes its own CV.

Before you know it, we’ve transformed what would’ve been waste into fresh mushrooms, fertiliser, and eventually, actual food that goes back into our communities. It’s a proper circular economy: Manchester’s food waste becomes Manchester’s food. No one’s more chuffed than us, except perhaps the worms, who think they’ve won the lottery.

So next time you’re sipping a flat white in Chorlton (or anywhere in our growing network), take a moment to appreciate the journey those grounds are about to embark on. They’re not just getting a second chance – they’re helping create jobs, cut carbon, and make our city a greener, more connected place to live.

And the best part? The whole thing runs on pedal power and good vibes. Which is more than can be said for our attempts at fixing the office printer, but that’s another story for another blog post.

Fancy getting involved? Whether you’re a café with grounds to spare, a cyclist with thighs of steel, or just someone who reckons this sounds proper decent, give us a shout. The kettle’s always on – though we might put the spent grounds to work rather than making you a second cup. Waste not, want not, as my Nan always said.