Katherine Willis, founder of Cups Full, is rethinking how specialty coffee can fit into travelling, working and everyday life.

Brewing Quality Beyond the Café

Katherine Willis founded Cups Full to offer portable specialty coffee bags that brew hot or cold, provide caffeine choices and reduce equipment, queues, mess and waste for modern coffee drinkers.

W hat if a genuinely good cup of coffee could travel as easily as the person drinking it? That question sits at the heart of Cups Full, the speciality coffee brand founded by Katherine Willis.

Designed for commuters, travellers, festival-goers, outdoor adventurers and anyone navigating a busy day, Cups Full offers freshly ground coffee in individual compostable bags. The format removes the need for machines, filters or complicated equipment, while the brand’s Peace, Pace and Power range allows customers to choose between different caffeine levels.

For Willis, however, convenience should never require a compromise on quality.

“A luxury, antioxidant-rich and caffeine-controlled cup that you can brew anywhere,” is how she describes the proposition. It is a simple promise, but one shaped by years of entrepreneurial curiosity, professional experience and product experimentation.

*Power, Pace and Peace bring speciality-grade coffee to a portable format that can be brewed in hot or cold water.*

An Idea Inspired by Japan

The beginnings of Cups Full can be traced to Willis’s experience of individual pour-over coffee bags in Japan. She admired the quality and portability of the format, but found that the paper wings used to attach the bag to a cup could be fiddly. Brewing also required the drinker to stand and gradually pour water through the coffee.

She began to imagine a more versatile alternative. Why could the coffee not sit inside the cup like a tea bag? Why could it not contain speciality-grade beans? Could the caffeine content be measured, allowing customers to select a coffee according to the time, occasion or energy level they wanted?

Sealing freshly ground coffee inside an individual bag provided an answer to several of those questions. The resulting format can be immersed in water and left to brew, making it suitable for both hot coffee and cold brew.

That versatility became one of the brand’s defining characteristics. A bag can be prepared with hot water during a working day or placed in cold water for a slower extraction without the equipment and preparation traditionally associated with cold brew.

Solving the Coffee Problem

Willis’s earlier experience as a barista also influenced the business. She remembers watching customers queue for black coffee and questioning how much labour, equipment and mess could be involved in preparing such a straightforward drink.

The same frustration followed her to festivals and trips, where obtaining a good coffee could involve lengthy queues, high prices or an inconsistent result. At home, making several individual coffees often meant additional equipment and washing up. For hospitality businesses, preparing large jugs in anticipation of demand could also create unnecessary waste.

Cups Full was developed to offer a simpler option. Each bag creates an individual serving, helping consumers and hospitality teams prepare only what they require.

“Made for bags, not just cupboards” has become an important part of the brand’s positioning. Willis does not see the product as something confined to the kitchen. It is designed to be carried and brewed wherever hot or cold water is available, from an office or hotel room to a campsite or festival.

Customers can explore the range through the Cups Full online shop.

Peace, Pace and Power

Caffeine control is another point of difference. The Cups Full range is divided into Peace, Pace and Power, providing distinct options for different moments of the day.

Willis believes coffee drinkers are often given surprisingly little information about the caffeine in their cup, despite growing interest in reducing or managing consumption. By measuring and testing its blends, the brand aims to provide customers with a clearer choice.

The range also recognises that coffee is not always consumed for the same reason. One person may want a gentler cup during a quiet moment, while another may be looking for energy before a meeting, journey or workout.

“Give the consumer a choice,” Willis says. The approach allows customers to adapt their coffee to the occasion without abandoning the flavour and character associated with speciality beans.

Creating the range required the business to balance several considerations simultaneously. Coffee quality, flavour, grind size, extraction, polyphenol content and caffeine levels all had to be addressed during development. Willis worked alongside a roasting partner and laboratory specialists through several iterations before reaching the desired profiles.

The result is coffee with layers of flavour rather than the uniform character commonly associated with instant products. Power, for example, combines beans from Brazil, India, Ethiopia and Vietnam, bringing together nutty, fruity, earthy and spiced notes.

Coffee for the Journey

Cups Full is built around movement, but its philosophy also encourages people to pause. Willis calls this a “Full Cup Moment” — a personal point at which someone becomes present and appreciates where they are.

That moment could arrive before an important presentation, at the top of a mountain or during a relaxed Sunday morning at home. The location matters less than the feeling.

“Life is about a journey, not just the destination,” she says. “Don’t forget to stop and enjoy it.”

Traditional speciality coffee culture often celebrates the ritual of preparation. Cups Full approaches ritual differently, reducing the equipment and practical steps so the drinker has more time to enjoy the experience itself.

This message has helped the brand connect with a community of creators and affiliates. Customers are encouraged to share the places, challenges and everyday experiences that represent their own Full Cup Moments.

The brand’s creator initiative enables supporters to share Cups Full during their own journeys and potentially earn commission through their content. Further details are available through its creator programme.

Sustainability as a Starting Point

Sustainability was a non-negotiable consideration during product development. Willis had seen how single-serve capsules could become difficult to recycle when their component materials needed to be separated. She had also heard from hospitality teams about the quantity of prepared coffee discarded after meetings and events.

Cups Full’s compostable bags allow individual servings to be made according to demand. The portable format is particularly important for a brand associated with travel, camping, festivals and the outdoors.

“The outdoor element would be a contradiction if the product was not sustainable,” Willis explains.

Responsible sourcing forms another part of that commitment. The coffee comes through farms and cooperatives connected to several growing regions, and Willis sees transparency throughout the journey from producer to consumer as essential.

She believes businesses have a responsibility to create genuine value and pursue a positive impact rather than simply choosing the easiest route to market. That outlook also reflects the expectations of customers who increasingly want to understand what they are buying and the practices behind it.

More information about the company’s purpose and product philosophy can be found on the Cups Full story page.

Building Beyond the Cup

Entrepreneurship has been part of Willis’s life since childhood. She began with small ventures selling sweets and flowers before exploring events, music projects and other business ideas. Later roles across marketing, sales and growth gave her the strategic and commercial experience to build Cups Full as both a product and a lifestyle brand.

The company has expanded through retail and ecommerce channels, bringing its portable approach to speciality coffee to a growing audience. Products in the range have also received recognition at the Great British Food Awards.

Willis’s ambitions extend considerably further. She envisions Cups Full becoming an internationally recognised name, available at different points throughout a customer’s journey — purchased online before departure, collected from a shop along the way, served during transport or discovered at a hotel after arrival.

Future growth could also involve partnerships with businesses connected to adventure, work, travel and active lifestyles. The goal is to build a brand associated not only with coffee, but with courage, freedom, energy and presence.

Cups Full ultimately proposes a different kind of convenience. It is not about lowering expectations or settling for less. It is about giving people a practical way to enjoy speciality coffee while they pursue the experiences, ambitions and quieter moments that make life feel full.