RWRD Meets – Series 1 | Anthony Duckworth, Founder Of Dear Coco Street Coffee

Chasing dreams and forging trails. Aussie surfer delivers a bricks & mortar-style street coffee experience off the beaten path.

Australian surfer, father of three daughters and Experiential Marketing Director Anthony Duckworth has just launched Dear Coco Street Coffee in London. A head turning, independent, family-owned business serving The Roasting Party specialty coffee, Emma Duckworth Bakes & little sweet shop from a stunningly converted Piaggio Apè along a tightly held stretch of the River Thames, Chiswick.

A Chiswick local himself, Anthony’s daily walks along Strand on the Green, a conservation area on the River Thames, during the pandemic urged him to follow his dreams and create something that befitted the beauty of the area. “Street coffee on the beach somewhere was my retirement plan” says Anthony from London. “But the pandemic encouraged me to chase my dreams with urgency, and Dear Coco was born…20 years earlier than expected!”

Dear Coco is not your traditional mobile coffee van or food truck. Its goal is to create a bricks & mortar café experience on the street. The knowledge, products and equipment reflect a boutique London coffee bar. As a result, the experience stops locals & river walkers in their tracks eager to experience something unique and shareable.

The street coffee business is an expansion of Anthony’s wife, Emma’s business (@emmaduckworthbakes on Instagram).

Emma is a published cookbook author, recipe developer & food photographer. Producing bakes for Dear Coco is the first time the general public can purchase Emma’s stunning baked goods. 40 items are lovingly baked each day, and when they’re gone they’re gone – much to the disappointment of late arriving customers!

Anthony & Emma have three daughters, with the business named after their five year old daughter, Coco. The two older girls can have fun helping on certain aspects of the business, but Coco often gets left behind given the age gap. So to balance the scales Coco got naming rights to the business.

Talking about the business model. “We didn’t want to drive around different locations like some coffee vans. Just like a bricks & mortar coffee bar, we wanted to put roots down and embed ourselves in the community” says Anthony. “We not only surround ourselves with some great minds in UK coffee to learn, but worked hard to include a La Marzocco using a state of the art power source in the Piaggio to produce the best street coffee humanly possible”.

On his new riverside location, Anthony explains “we set out to create a business that added something special to the riverside experience, rather than simply take from it. We’re passionate about our family story, specialty coffee and Chiswick as our home, and we hope our business reflects that”.