I sit looking out onto Trumpington street, people watching as rain falls onto the cobblestones. I take a sip of my latte and open my notebook. Sitting across from me is Jasmine Jayyousi, the founder of Pages coffee house. She smiles as she tells me that “it really has been not just about the coffee for me. It’s been about creating a space where people feel safe and can meet other people – I think it’s become that!

Jayyousi founded Pages in 2023 after lockdown forced her to move back to Cambridge, where she grew up. On her 30th birthday, she realised how misaligned to her purpose her career in fashion felt. While she reflected on different paths she could take, she kept coming back to the theme of community, and saw a coffee house as the best way to build it in Cambridge. “My husband and I, no matter how much money we had, would always scrape together the pennies to go for a coffee,” she explained. “[Coffee] really brings people together” as a small luxury most people find themselves drawn to.

“I really want to make sure it’s a nice space for people to work in – I think that comes across when you enter”

I take a moment to absorb my surroundings amidst the soft hum of conversations, the clink of a cup against a saucer, a young mother discussing her plans for a playdate with the barista. This familiarity is something Jayyousi is particularly proud of, telling me that “I am extremely particular about who I hire”. Running the business herself means that the team she employs aren’t merely an “extra pair of hands” but a group of “friendly faces”. She strives to cultivate a community within her team: “I really want to make sure it’s a nice space for people to work in – I think that comes across when you go into a space.”

Jayyousi also believes in creating a community between herself and other businesses in Cambridge. When a friend who manages Hotel du Vin, a neighboring business, mentioned his desire to start a run club, the solution was simple to Jayyousi: “I was like ‘you can do it here! ’ It’s about bringing other businesses together – all independents should support each other.” While Jayyousi herself is not a runner, observing the results of the run club has been “really special”. “It’s really hard as adults to make friends – you really have to put yourself out there,” she explains. “They come in, they’re shy, they go on the road, and then they come back, and you come back out here, and they’re all sat together having a coffee.”

“You see them go through their journey, you see them go through their struggles”

When I ask what her dream club would be, Jayyousi takes a more creative route, telling me that “I love art, so I’d do some sort of drawing club – maybe a life drawing club!” She always envisioned the café as “a space where people could be creative. […] I call[ed] it Pages because I literally meant going back to the old ways of writing on a page,” she says. In the past few years, Jayyousi has seen this come to fruition, watching customers evolve in their creative journeys. “There have been people who’ve written books, finished their books here, and they’ve mentioned us in the credits and things like that. To me, that is really special.”

With the graduation season just around the corner, Pages is preparing to say goodbye to some of their regulars as they finish their degrees and move into their next phase of life. “People are constantly coming and going. The regulars that you know from the University – they start, you see them go through their journey, you see them go through their struggles, but there’s always a goodbye.” It’s a bittersweet goodbye, as September brings new waves of students into Cambridge. Jayyousi laughs: “You have to win them over every year!”