Published: February 5, 2026 at 2:50 pm
Two Manchester-based tech workers are celebrating the first year of a coffee side hustle that has grown from a Kickstarter experiment into a fast-growing national subscription business.
Vex Coffee was founded by Ross Jamieson and John Bradshaw, who both work full-time in the tech sector and began building the company in evenings and weekends after launching a Kickstarter campaign in late 2024.
The idea was born during a drive back to Manchester from Wales, when the pair began discussing how difficult it was for people outside major cities to discover high-quality speciality coffee without specialist knowledge, expensive equipment or access to independent cafés.