“We have loved working with Paul – he has been really proactive and has sought to get to the bottom of any challenge that we have faced. We have been impressed with his outputs which are to the highest standard.”
About Paul
I build Shopify stores for craft food and drink brands — because I've been a craft food founder myself.
The short version
I ran Cocoa Hernando, a luxury chocolate business that ended up stocked in Selfridges. I learned, the hard way, what it takes to make a small food brand work — from sourcing and packaging to margins and the painful moments when your website doesn't do justice to what's in the box.
Now I build Shopify stores for founders going through the same thing.
Why craft food and drink?
Because I'm obsessed with it. I ferment my own kombucha and kefir at home. I read every ingredient label. I'm building my own wellness product right now, which means I'm learning the modern DTC playbook from the founder's side of the table — paid acquisition, retention, subscription, social commerce, AI — and bringing all of it back to the brands I work with.
When you hire me, you're not hiring someone who learned about your category from a brief. You're hiring someone who lives and breathes the world of food and drink.
The longer version
I'm originally from Bolton, now based in Hackney, East London. I've been building websites for over twenty years.
I started out co-founding a web design studio with a friend, working with music industry clients including Doves and John Cale of the Velvet Underground. From there I spent years inside London's big advertising agencies — McCann, Saatchi & Saatchi — building digital work for global brands. Along the way I've done some strange and wonderful things: interactive vending machines, exhibition installations, a pop-up aquarium, an animated website inside Bill Bailey's head.
All of that adds up to one thing: I know how to build websites that work. Custom development, clean code, real performance — not just a Shopify theme with the colours changed.
But food has always been a huge passion. I started Cocoa Hernando. I got deep into fermentation. And I've recently decided to push that passion into my work.
So that's what I do now.
What you can expect from me
Great communication, hard work and passion. I'll tell you when an idea is great and when it isn't. I work with a small number of brands at a time so the ones I'm working with get my full attention.
I'm also a chatty northerner, so I'm always up for a chat. Especially about food and drink
Trusted by serious organisations
Before I focused on craft food and drink, I built websites for academics, agencies, and global organisations. Here's what they said.
Gina Artzen, Gripped
“Thanks for your support with this Paul Tomlinson. We’ve certainly made a big impact on the organic performance of the site. Not just by cleaning up the performance, but also by just moving away from layers and layers of legacy issues that were continually being added to. A fresh start and some impressive growth in organic traffic to go with it…”
Sam Robinson, Whole of the Moon Marketing
“Paul was a pleasure to work with and was always happy to find a way of delivering what was required, even in the face of the occasional technical challenge!”
Eddie May, Overdog Marketing
“Paul developed a bespoke responsive website as part of a remote creative team for an international client. During the project Paul was knowledgeable about his craft, prompt to respond and thorough throughout – he went over and above to ensure the client was happy. Our client is thrilled with the end result. Thank you, Paul!”
Cath Harris, IPSA Consulting
“Working with Paul was an absolute pleasure and I’d happily recommend him to anyone who needs an expert, safe pair of hands for their web development. He was exactly the right man for the job on a highly demanding project!”
Steph Melodia, MD, Bloom Ltd
“Paul Tomlinson and Alex Pitt managed to create a miracle in a such a short period of time. He redesigned an existing website into a more dynamic and user-friendly site while Alex made it attractive and welcoming to users. I am very appreciative of their professionalism, time and ingenuity. I would work with both of them again in a second, and I would highly recommend them to others.”
Prof. Paul Spiegel, Director, Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health
“Paul Tomlinson has managed to develop a brand-new website for our COVID-19 Humanitarian offering very new functionalities and options. Paul’s technical skills and experience have been essential to launch our website in time. Reliability, listening to our needs and being able to translate them into functional tools fully characterise Paul’s work.”
Prof. Karl Blanchet, Director, Geneva Centre of Humanitarian Studies
“Paul was very responsive, had a positive attitude and provided a great service”
Ovi Vilkauskas, SharpEnd