about Café Maia: fabulous food, great surroundings and green values
The morning coffee run. A spot of lunch with friends. One frothy cappuccino to accompany one brilliant book. Or five minutes of me-time to recharge and refresh.Whatever their reasons for visiting Café Maia, our customers always get fresh, great tasting produce that doesn’t cost the earth – quite literally.
It’s not easy being green, but being green makes Café Maia different. And by different, we don’t mean using a few recycled paper bags here and there – we go the whole hog. The counters, the flooring, the paint on the walls ... we make them all as eco-friendly as we can.
We pay attention to the little things, too. Our coasters are made from recycled car tyres and our pencils from discarded CD cases. Heck, even the baseball caps our staff wear come from recycling the non-biodegradable polymer components of plastic bottles. Half measures? Only in our drinks.
Our meticulous approach to sustainability gave us our name: Maia Maiestas (Maia the Majestic) is the Roman goddess of growth, fertility and warmth.
Click here to listen to the pronunciation.
Café Maia is a labour of love for Managing Directors John Holley and Matthew Fletcher. John’s experience of project managing cafés and coffee house fittings has very obvious benefits, and is brilliantly complemented by Matt’s creative design and build knowledge.
The two entrepreneurs first met while creating Mungo’s Bistro, at the University of Kent, Canterbury. And it was another higher education project that saw the birth of Café Maia.
Leeds University unveiled plans for its £16 million state-of-the-art eco hall – the greenest on its campus – in late 2006. Knowing the owners would be looking for a very special catering franchise, John and Matt came up with an eco-friendly concept that would please the university’s decision makers. The concept was swiftly given the thumbs up and Café Maia was born.
With Café Maia Leeds now up and running, John and Matt have a strong, exciting brand in place and another truckload of eco-friendly ideas ready to go. Café Maia is set to become one of the most sought after catering franchises in the country by being one of the most ethical.
How refreshing.
John
Managing Director
café maia