Our Founder, Fergus, forged a successful career in the branded restaurant sector, but always yearned to do it his way. Constantly baffled by the lack of a continental style café-bar serving great coffee and exciting food near home, the idea was born for Baffled Coffee.

Fergus and wife, Rachael, kick off the search for the perfect venue and find Fawcett Road. On a shoe-string budget with a crash course in restaurant fit-outs based mostly on Pinterest and a lot of family manpower, they set about converting this vacant shop into the long-held vision.

Baffled Coffee opens its doors, and welcomes in the first ever paying customers. The wheels soon began to turn and before we knew it, word got around – locals found us, passers-by dropped in and the press got wind of a new boy in town running something a bit different. Growing and refining the menu so you can talk about love of food

After a summer of finding our feet we started to really expand our food offering with exciting weekend specials and a move beyond the deli style beginnings into a restaurant level menu.

After a busy summer of events across the city we honed our menu and made the most of our customers’ appetite for an ever evolving, imaginative menu of hot and cold snacks and bigger meals.

With our long love affair with Italian culture and food, we were desperate to bring the wonderful Venetian tradition of Aperitivi and Cicchetti to Portsmouth. So, we launched a series of one-off evenings of classic cocktails and endless nibbles. Tickets sold out and the place was rammed!

We had to shut our doors but we NEVER closed. Knowing that our suppliers were crying out for business and the public were desperately in need of supplies we, over the course of a weekend built ourselves an online shop and began making up to 200 deliveries ourselves per week. Hard but rewarding work.

Our beachfront booth is the latest leg of the big Baffled adventure. Welcoming new friends and old, our popular little hang-out is just along from Southsea Pier. Serving up all the usual delights, made daily at our central café, we’re perfectly placed for a sunny beach picnic or seafront stroll.

The exciting journey continues for Baffled. We always have our eye on the next opportunity, but never at the expense of what we have now, the quality of our food and the customers who are our absolute lifeblood. Heartfelt thanks to you all.