How to Host a Macmillan Coffee Morning in Your Pub

Part of the Autumn Pub Playbook — a September-to-November plan for filling your pub.

Most pubs treat the daytime as a write-off. The doors are open, the lights are on, a member of staff is leaning on the bar, and barely anyone comes in until lunch. That quiet stretch between opening and the first proper rush is where a surprising amount of money quietly leaks away every single week.

A coffee morning is one of the simplest ways to plug that gap. It gives people a specific reason to come in at a time they'd usually skip, it costs you almost nothing to run, and it does it under the banner of a cause everyone already understands and respects. Macmillan's World's Biggest Coffee Morning is the obvious hook, and it sits perfectly alongside a Greene King autumn toolkit, because autumn daytimes are exactly when the pub goes quiet.

At The Anchor in Stanwell Moor, the daytime sessions we've turned around have all started the same way: with one reliable reason for people to walk through the door before lunch. A coffee morning is about as easy a reason as you'll find.

The date, and why it doesn't have to box you in

The World's Biggest Coffee Morning 2026 is Friday 25 September 2026 — the last Friday of the month. That's your headline date, the one with the national push behind it, and there's real value in riding that wave: when Macmillan are all over the radio and social feeds, you're tapping into something people are already thinking about rather than trying to start a conversation from scratch.

But here's the bit a lot of licensees miss. Macmillan are completely clear that you can host on any day that suits you. If a Friday is one of your busier daytimes anyway, or you'd rather not compete with every café in town on the same morning, move it. A quiet Tuesday or Wednesday in late September or early October works just as well — arguably better, because you're adding trade to a genuinely dead session rather than a half-decent one.

So treat the 25th as the anchor and the option, not the rule. Pick the slot in your week that's flattest, and put the coffee morning there.

A simple run-sheet you can lift straight away

You don't need to overthink this. The whole point is that it's low-effort and low-risk. Here's the shape of it.

Coffee and cake — the core

This is the event. Put on a proper coffee and tea offer and a table of cakes, and you're 80% of the way there.

• Ask your regulars and your team to bake. Most communities have at least a handful of people who love an excuse to bring a Victoria sponge in. A "bring a cake, have a brew on us" swap works brilliantly and fills the table for free.
• If baking's thin on the ground, buy in trays of traybakes and slice them up. Nobody minds.
• Run the coffee and cake on a suggested donation rather than a fixed price. A jar and a friendly "whatever you can spare, it all goes to Macmillan" raises more than a till button ever will, and it keeps it firmly a fundraiser rather than a transaction.

A raffle

A raffle is the single biggest lift you can add for the least effort. Ask local businesses for prizes — the butcher, the florist, the hairdresser, a nearby attraction. Most will happily donate a voucher for the goodwill and the mention. Sell strips on the day, draw it at a set time so people stay for it, and you've turned a quiet hour into a reason to linger.

A donation jar (and a card option)

Have a clearly labelled jar on the bar, but don't rely on cash alone — fewer people carry it now. Macmillan's pack and website cover online giving and QR-code options, so set one up and stick the code on every table. Make it effortless to give.

A local-group tie-in

This is what turns a quiet coffee morning into a busy one. Invite a local group to make your pub their home for the morning — the WI, a baby-and-toddler group, a walking club, the local history society, a knit-and-natter. They get a warm room and a focus; you get a crowd that arrives together, stays a while, and brings people who've never set foot in your pub before. Pick a group whose timing suits a daytime and whose members are exactly the kind of new faces you'd love to see again.

For more on the mechanics that apply to any event like this — hosting it properly, running a clean run-sheet, promoting it early — our guide to running successful pub events is worth a read alongside this one.

How it actually pays for a wet-led pub

Let's be straight about the money, because that's the bit that makes a coffee morning sustainable rather than a one-off act of kindness.

The donations go to Macmillan. That's the whole point, and it should be. But the trade is yours, and for a wet-led pub the trade is where the return sits.

Footfall on a dead session. You're filling a slot that was earning you next to nothing. Every person in the room is incremental — you're adding custom, not shuffling it from another part of the day. That's the most valuable kind of footfall there is.

Food and drink attach. People who come for coffee and cake don't all leave at noon. A good chunk stay for lunch, order a pot of tea and a sandwich, or settle in for the afternoon. Have your lunch menu visible and your specials board ready, and let the coffee morning roll naturally into your daytime food trade. If you don't do food, a strong line in cakes, pastries and good coffee still lifts the average spend of a session that had none.

Regulars' goodwill. This one's harder to put a number on but it's real. When your locals see you putting your room, your team and your effort behind a cause that's touched almost every family in the country, it deepens their relationship with the pub. People drink where they feel something. A pub that shows up for its community gets that back in loyalty, in word of mouth, and in the bookings that follow.

New faces you can keep. Every person who discovers your pub through a coffee morning is someone you can win as a regular if the welcome's right. That's the real long game — not the morning itself, but the visits it leads to.

Promoting it so people actually turn up

A coffee morning with no one in it helps no one. Promotion is where most well-meaning events quietly fall over, so give it the same care you'd give a quiz launch. You don't need six weeks for this one — two to three is plenty — but you do need to be consistent rather than posting once and hoping.

Lean on local groups and pages. Community Facebook groups, the village or town noticeboard, the local WhatsApp, the parish newsletter — these are where daytime, local audiences actually live. One genuine post in the right community group will do more than a week of generic socials.

Use your own socials properly. Announce the date, then build to it. A shot of the cake table being planned, a "we're raffling a hamper from the butcher", a reminder the day before. Tag Macmillan and use the campaign's hashtags so you ride the national push.

Update your Google Business Profile. Add it as a post or an event. People searching for somewhere local at the right moment will see it, and it signals to anyone checking you out that you're an active, community-minded pub.

Tell your regulars in person. The oldest channel and still the best. A word over the bar in the run-up does more than you'd think, especially for a daytime crowd who aren't always glued to a feed.

If posting consistently across all this feels like one more job you don't have time for, that's exactly the kind of thing we help with — see how we work with pubs.

Turning it into a fixture, not a one-off

The first coffee morning is the hard one. By the second or third, people know what it is, the local group has it in the diary, and the cakes turn up without you having to chase. That's when it stops being an event and becomes part of your week.

You don't have to wait a full year between them, either. The Macmillan morning in September is a brilliant launchpad, but the format works any month. A monthly or seasonal coffee morning — tied to a different local group each time, or to a seasonal moment — keeps that quiet daytime working for you all year round and gives a whole crowd of people a standing reason to choose your pub before lunch.

It also slots neatly into a wider plan. If you want to build out the rest of your autumn around it, the full Autumn Pub Playbook maps out a September-to-November calendar you can drop a coffee morning straight into.

A quick word on doing it properly

This is about as low-risk as pub events get, but two sensible habits apply. Keep serving responsibly — Challenge 25 doesn't clock off for a daytime event. And if anything about your plan steps outside your normal licensed hours or licensed area — say you wanted to spill into a part of the car park, or run later than usual — check your premises licence and speak to your council about a Temporary Event Notice well ahead of the day. For a standard coffee morning inside your normal hours and footprint, you've nothing extra to sort.

Your first move

Don't plan a campaign. Plan one morning.

1. Pick your flattest daytime in late September — the 25th if it suits, any day that week if it doesn't.
2. Sign up for the free fundraising pack at macmillan.org.uk/coffee-morning so the posters, bunting and giving options arrive ready to go.
3. Invite one local group to make your pub their home for the morning, and ask your regulars to bake.
4. Promote it for two to three weeks across your community groups, socials and Google Business Profile.
5. Run it, take photos, thank everyone, and put the next date in the diary before the room empties.

Do that once and you'll have a quiet daytime working harder, a community that feels closer to your pub, and a cause worth backing all in a single morning. Then do it again.

If you'd like a hand filling your quiet daytimes — picking the right format, getting the promotion right, and turning one-off events into fixtures — that's exactly what we do at Orange Jelly.

FAQs

When is the Macmillan Coffee Morning 2026? Macmillan's World's Biggest Coffee Morning falls on Friday 25 September 2026, the last Friday of the month. You don't have to use that date, though — Macmillan are clear you can host on any day that suits your pub and your week.

How do I host a Macmillan Coffee Morning in a pub? Sign up for the free pack at macmillan.org.uk/coffee-morning, pick a daytime slot, and put on coffee and cake with a donation jar. Add a raffle and tie in a local group to bring a crowd. Promote it for two to three weeks across your socials, local groups and Google Business Profile.

How does a coffee morning make money for a wet-led pub? The donations go to Macmillan, but the footfall is yours. People who'd never normally be in before lunch come through the door, many stay for food or a drink, and your regulars see you backing a cause they care about. It fills a dead daytime and builds goodwill that pays off for weeks.

Do I need anything official to fundraise? Macmillan provide everything in their free fundraising pack, including posters, bunting and a guide — sign up at macmillan.org.uk/coffee-morning. Keep serving responsibly under Challenge 25, and if your plan steps outside your normal hours or licensed area, check your premises licence and your council about a Temporary Event Notice.