Speaking of coffee, I'm proud to say I have been 'sober' for 4 weeks. Well sort of.. if coffee scrub doesn't count. By now, I think everyone in the office has been sick of me raving about this new found love of mine. I'm a strong believer in coffee scrub, I use body, hand and face scrub almost every other day as I love the feeling of soft, smooth skin. I have previously raved about quite a few Australian brands being the expert in the field and I have yet to find another good one in the market so far... until two weeks ago at Balance Festival!

Meet my new shower buddy. OPTIAT.

My favorite thing about Optiat is that they come in tube form, unlike many other scrub in the market (which I have no idea why) come in paper bag form which gets soggy and breaks down the scrub in just a few weeks. I had a go with the Mandarin which smells divine, especially when it's mixing with the cocoa scent within the coffee grounds. Not to mention this stuff WORKS, I personally really like the smaller grind compare to Australian brands which can be quite coarse and irregular in ground size. Last of all, as a former coffee lover, what better way to do good for our environment by supporting an eco-friendly brand to recycle coffee waste!

Check out more about the brand here and our conversation with their founder, William:

How did it all started with Optiat - what was the catalyst that sparked your interest to start your own business?

Back in Dec 2015, my fiancée had bought us a cafetiere for Christmas – a French press made by Tom Dixon. We had just started getting into our coffee and thought we would divert our money away from the chains and into brewing our own.

Secondly, I had started reading Sir Alan Sugar’s autobiography “What You See Is What You Get”, after the winner of the 2015 Apprentice series dropped in the fact he had read it in an interview at the final 5 stage! I had only got about 15 pages in when Sir Sugar started talking about how at the age of 14, he observed road maintenance men digging up the roads and re-laying them, discarding the tar-soaked timber beams that had formed the roads before. He took the beams, chopped them up and sold them to his local corner shop as firelighters.

Finally, I was introduced to the concept of applying coffee to your skin after a holiday to Bali, where they had been using coffee scrubs for hundreds, if not thousands of years, as a natural beauty treatment. It was noted that it was highly effective in targeting skin complaints such as eczema, cellulite and stretch marks.

Putting the three ideas together, the train of thought went a little like this:
i. Brewing coffee generates a lot of coffee grounds which need to be disposed of...
ii. Imagine how much a typical café has to dispose of every day...
iii. Surely there must be a better use for these coffee grounds...
iv. Why not take something that would otherwise be discarded, and give it a new purpose...
v. Why not collect some of the world’s finest coffee grounds from cafes, bars and restaurants across London, and turn them into one of the world’s oldest skin treatments

From this sequence, the idea was born. That was back in January 2016, and we’ve come a long way since then!

What's your day-to-day routine like as a entrepreneur?

Although my routine is similar on a day-to-day basis (up at 6am, at work by 730am, back home at 7.30pm) the nature of the role means that every day is different! Usually it’s a combination of fulfilling customers’ orders, dealing with larger wholesale orders, sales, marketing, social media, replying to emails and taking calls.

We are also simultaneously working on a number of longer projects, such as developing our new range of natural, organic, vegan and sustainable face masks, which we can’t wait to release! We’re also creating beautiful mini gift sets of our whole range in single-serve format.

We also love getting out and meeting people, whether that’s our brand new PR agency who we are really excited to start working with or doing festivals and trade shows over the year.

Of course, we regularly also carry out coffee collections. In fact it has become almost a daily occurrence as we scale up. The demand for our natural sustainable scrubs has been incredible and we are absolutely thrilled with how everything is progressing.

Tell us a little bit more about the scrub. What's the philosophy behind and what's so special about them?

Influenced by the thoughtful care and attention we put into our scrubs, ‘For the Love of Scrub’ is a range of four naturally-scented scrubs inspired by real-life events and experiences. Whether that's before a date, after a big night out, after a workout at the gym or just for a quiet night in, we have you covered. In our experience of previously using coffee scrubs, we experienced a number of issues:

i.    They came in paper bags that were meant to sit in the shower or bath over a period of time: They got wet, started to disintegrate and break down.
ii.    They came as a dry powder, meaning that a lot just fell off the skin and was wasted. Plus they created a lot of mess!
iii.    The price point at £15 felt a bit high given the issues mentioned above.

We set about making ours the best coffee scrub on the market by addressing all those issues mentioned:
- The only coffee scrub in the world that comes out of a tube, resulting in a much more practical and better user experience!
- The only coffee scrub that comes in a gel/paste texture, meaning it sticks better to the body and results in much less mess and waste.
- Priced the lowest on the high street at only £9.99 for our large size scrub (220g) and £6.99 for the travel sized (90g).
- Of course, our most important feature is the fact that our scrubs leave you not only with clear skin, but also a clear conscience. By using repurposed coffee, we address a huge waste issue whilst at the same time leave you with soft, smooth and glowing skin!

PS. Stay tuned for our next newsletter, we might be giving away this little cutey for your summer travel (if we didn't use it up by then, that is!)