The Colonel’s Son Coffee Roasters opened just after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, temporarily closed in September last year, then re-opened following a makeover in May 2022, since when it’s been going from strength to strength. On Meadow Place, a very short walk from Shrewsbury Station, there’s not a lot to The Colonel’s Son, just a small shop with a window-bar at the front, the counter in the middle and the roaster at the back. Oh, and a bench outside, in case the four seats inside are taken.

The Colonel’s Son is run by Patch, who is indeed the son of a Colonel, his father having served with the Queen’s Royal Irish Hussars. It’s very much a what-you-see-is-what-you-get sort of place, with a standard espresso-based menu (served in proper cups, I’m pleased to say) and a choice of a medium or dark roast blend. There’s a wider selection of coffee for sale in retail bags, including some lighter roasted single-origins, roasted fresh each Monday, along with a small range of cakes.

March 2023: sad news: Patch has decided to close The Colonel’s Son. I wish him well in his next venture, whatever it may be.

You can read more of my thoughts after the gallery.

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Given The Colonel’s Son Coffee Roasters’ proximity to the station, where it joins Shrewsbury Coffeehouse and Iron & Fire vying for your pre/post-train coffee fix, it made a good starting point for my brief coffee tour of Shrewsbury on Friday. Of the three, it’s the least prominent, but it’s well worth finding. Walking past Iron & Fire as you leave the station, you then head by Shrewsbury Coffeehouse as you make your way up the hill, before turning right down Meadow Place, where you’ll find The Colonel’s Son on the left at the end of a row of houses.

There’s not much to it from the street, but neither is there much to it inside, so it wins points for consistency, as well as for the striking yellow of the door (on the right) and the frames of the large window which constitutes the rest of the front. A single black bench runs under the window, matched inside by the four-person window-bar. The counter, meanwhile, runs wall-to-wall across the middle of the shop, behind which you’ll find both the Colonel’s son (Patch) and the coffee roaster, a neat 6 kg model of indeterminate parentage.

The cakes occupy a large display case in front of you on the counter, drawn from a combination of local bakeries and old friends, Cakesmiths, while the espresso machine and its two grinders are at the left-hand end. Finally, against the left-hand wall, a set of shelves holds the retail selection, a little depleted on my visit since it was a Friday (Patch roasts, and hence restocks, every Monday, when the shop is closed).

I got my day underway with a wonderfully smooth flat white made with the medium roast blend. Rich and creamy, coffee and milk were in perfect harmony. I then got chatting with Patch and a customer, buying a couple of bags of coffee (the blend from my flat white and a light roast single-origin from Honduras). On hearing that I was planning on taking the Honduran coffee as a gift to New York the following week, Patch insisted on giving me a sample as a parting gift so that I would be able to try it myself. And with that, I was on my way.

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