Up for the cup: Chelsea captain Erin Cuthbert on her coffee side hustle, Ruby Alba
Being captain of the team that has won the Women’s Super League eight times in the last decade might be enough to keep most people busy, but not Chelsea’s Erin Cuthbert.
Off the pitch, Cuthbert has her own coffee business, Ruby Alba, which she launched earlier this year in order to satisfy her entrepreneurial cravings and set her up for life after football.
“I didn’t actually know it’d be possible to set up the business while I was playing, but I was so driven and determined to to make something happen,” the Scotland midfielder, 28, tells City AM.
“I had an itch that had needed to be scratched for over a year. I wanted something of my own, I was obsessed with coffee, and I thought ‘this is the perfect thing’.”
Cuthbert draws on her business degree and MBA, both of which she completed while racking up 17 trophies with Chelsea, to manage all sales, leads and social media for Ruby Alba.
She also leans on Constant Contact, an AI-powered marketing partner, which became a partner of Chelsea Women last year and has named Cuthbert as a small business ambassador.
The platform “works really well because they can help me automate my services, the services in the background, while I’m able to to focus on the football”, she says.
“I probably spend two to three hours a day managing everything, but I do think it’s now starting to get to the point where I’m working autonomously.”
Supplying Chelsea teammates and England cricketers
Cuthbert explored producing shin-pads before deciding to pursue coffee, a personal passion due to her seven-cup-a-day habit. “One doesn’t even touch the sides now,” she jokes.
“I have tried so many coffees across the world over the last 10 years, and thought: why not make one of my own?”
It’s an interest shared by many of her Chelsea colleagues. “The girls love coffee. The coffee machine upstairs must get absolutely rinsed, like 300 coffees a day. It’s extremely high volume.”
Teammate Katie McCabe is a customer, while Cuthbert supplied the England Women cricket team during this year’s World Cup after a personal request from former captain Heather Knight
“Hopefully, in the near future, I’ll be supplying the club or supplying the [Chelsea training ground] building. But there’s a lot of rigorous processes we have to go through before I get the approval. There’s a lot of big coffee fans in the building, so it’s a strict selection process.”
Cuthbert using injury rehab to build Ruby Alba coffee
Having registered Ruby Alba in February, Cuthbert spent a few weeks touring roasteries before alighting on one in Glasgow, We Love Coffee, and by May was taking pre-orders.
That early momentum was interrupted when she suffered a serious knee injury in June, four days after launch, but that enforced downtime hasn’t been wasted.
“That was obviously far from ideal. I had so much in the pipeline that all had to go on hold because that’s just real life. That’s the reality that we’re all facing,” she says.
“It’s great now because I’m in rehab and your emotions are very stable but once I get back into the squad I know that it’s going to be an emotional rollercoaster. So I’m setting the foundations now so that when I do go back to work it can be one or two hours a day.”
In time, Cuthbert hopes to hire her first employees to run it for her and allow her more downtime in between training sessions, matches and lifting more silverware.
“I want this to grow steadily while I’m playing my football career, but I also want to state that football’s my No1 priority. I’ve got so much more to give in the game,” she says.
“I’m still technically in my prime years and I want to win more trophies. But what I’m doing on the side with Ruby Alba is trying to create passive income for the future, because I know that football is not forever.
“Retirement age is not so far away. It’s great the life we have now, but that is all going to change in some years, and having something that I can walk into that I’m proud to have, that is my brand, and to then grow it from there is what I’m aiming to do.”