- Mon–Sat 8am–5pm, Sun 8:30am–4pm
- 3 Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma Gate, York, YO1 8BL
Trio began with a Turkish family from Istanbul who came to the UK for their studies, fell in love with York, and eventually decided to make the city home.
At the end of 2016, we opened Trio on Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma-Gate.
We chose this little corner of York for a reason. We wanted to be close to everything that makes the city so lively, while offering somewhere you could escape from it at the same time.
Even when York is at its busiest — Christmas markets in full swing, streets packed and everyone rushing around — Trio is just around the corner. Somewhere to sit down, have a proper coffee, watch the world go by and take a moment before getting back out there.
When we opened, we were number three of three businesses on one of York’s shortest streets with one of its longest names.
Three out of three. Trio.
From day one, we knew we wanted Trio to serve genuinely good coffee.
Finding it took a while.
We tried coffee after coffee after coffee — to the point where we were pretty sure our tongues had stopped tasting anything — before finding the Guatemalan beans we wanted to serve.
But our coffee also gave us an opportunity to bring a little bit of Istanbul to York.
Our Turkish coffee is served the traditional way. We brought the proper cups over from Istanbul and serve it alongside Turkish delight and a small glass of water to cleanse the palate.
It’s a small tradition from home that’s now found a home in York too.
Every morning, our croissants are freshly baked ready for the day ahead.
They’re also very often gone before midday, so we’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions about whether they’re any good.
It’s become one of those dishes that does most of the advertising itself.
Someone orders one, it gets carried through the café, another table spots it…
“We’ll have one of those as well.”
And as York changes through the year, so does Trio. We love changing our drinks with the seasons, particularly our festive menus. There’s always something new appearing behind the counter as one season turns into the next.
Ask us what we’re most proud of and we’d probably say the atmosphere.
We’re right in the centre of one of the UK’s most visited cities, yet new members of our team regularly tell us they’ve never worked somewhere with such a high ratio of regulars to tourists.
We think there’s a reason for that.
If someone joins us after working somewhere that’s all about putting the lid on the takeaway cup, calling the next customer and moving the queue along, we try to change those habits.
Of course we care about making a great coffee.
But we also care about the conversation that comes with it.
Our regulars don’t just come in because they know what they’re ordering. They come in because they know the people behind the counter, and we know them too.
That’s the Trio we wanted to create back in 2016, and it’s still the Trio we want today.
On a normal morning, Trio is the kind of place you don’t particularly want to leave.
Coffee on the table. Something freshly baked. Conversation in the background. York passing by outside.
You’re close enough to all the liveliness to be part of it, but tucked far enough away to have a moment from it.
Sit for a while. Do a bit of people-watching.
York will still be there when you’re ready to get back out there.
