Our story.

Our Story

We’re Sean and Daniel. Husbands, hospitality people and the two people behind Greyskull.

We opened Greyskull in St Andrew’s Mews in the summer of 2025, but the idea had been kicking around for much longer than that.

It started on a boat

When we got together in 2012, we talked a lot about the kind of life we wanted.

We both worked hard, but neither of us particularly fancied spending our lives chasing bigger salaries to pay for increasingly expensive lives.

So we bought a narrowboat and spent nine years living on London’s canals.

Keeping life relatively simple gave us the freedom to change direction. Sean left restaurant marketing and branding to work for himself. Later, Daniel left a well-paid career and started again as a trainee barista, eventually working his way up to managing a flagship speciality coffee shop in Seven Dials.

All the while, we kept talking about the same thing.

One day, we’d open our own coffee shop by the sea.

Then we found Hastings

We'd spent years looking at seaside towns before eventually moving to Hastings.

It felt right. Creative, independent, slightly rough around the edges and full of people doing interesting things.

Then we found St Andrew’s Mews.

It wasn't exactly prime café territory. Tucked away from the main footfall, it was quiet and overlooked. But there was something about it we loved.

We started with a coffee machine, an outdoor kitchen and a couple of pop-ups.

After the second one, we were offered a permanent unit.

So, slightly sooner than planned, we opened Greyskull.

One year later

We thought we were opening a speciality coffee shop.

Great coffee during the week. A really good brunch at the weekend.

It hasn't quite worked out like that.

Food became a much bigger part of Greyskull than we ever expected. Our house-cured bacon became a thing. Events took off. We started putting on gigs, parties and markets.

And somewhere along the way, Greyskull became more than a coffee shop.

It's become our Gastro Caff: serious speciality coffee, ambitious food and the friendly, informal spirit of a proper British caff.

It's also become a little community.

One of the loveliest surprises has been what Greyskull has come to mean to parts of the queer community. We're two husbands who opened a coffee shop because we love coffee and food. We never set out to create a specifically gay space.

But people have travelled surprisingly long distances to visit us because we're gay-owned, and we've heard from customers how much having places like Greyskull matters to them.

That's been incredibly touching.

Greyskull will always be for everyone who loves great coffee, food and a good time. But we're also very proud to support and give something back to the queer community that has supported us so enthusiastically.

Tucked away. Worth finding.

Perhaps the biggest thing we've learnt is just how difficult it is to build a business somewhere people don't naturally walk past.

Even with Sean's background in restaurant marketing, getting people to discover our little corner of Hastings has been much harder than we imagined.

It's forced us to work harder.

The coffee has to be exceptional. The food has to be worth travelling for. The events have to give people a reason to come down. We can't rely on passing trade because there isn't much of it.

But slowly, something rather lovely has happened.

The Mews is changing.

New businesses have arrived. People have chosen to move here because of what's happening around us. A part of town that once felt overlooked is beginning to have a life of its own, and we're incredibly proud that Greyskull has played a part in that.

A year in, we're still learning, still changing things and still occasionally wondering why two people who'd worked in hospitality for years didn't realise quite how difficult running a caff would be.

But we love what we've created.

And our ambition now is pretty simple.

When people talk about coming to Hastings, we want Greyskull to be one of the places they tell you not to miss.

We might not be on the main drag.

You'll just have to come and find us.

Greyskull · Gastro Caff · Hastings

Tucked away. Worth finding.