The arches
Bermondsey
Brick railway arches with the power and the ventilation a roaster needs: Monmouth at Spa Terminus, WatchHouse on Maltby Street, and cafés along Bermondsey Street.
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City · United Kingdom
Railway arches, world champions and the flat white: the roasters, the neighbourhoods, the prices, and where to start.
Updated September 2026 · tracking 53 London roasters and 297 coffees, live
London has been drinking coffee since 1652, when a stall opened in an alley off Cornhill, and it has been drinking good coffee since 1978, when Anita Le Roy and Nicholas Saunders started roasting in a basement on Monmouth Street. The modern scene arrived in the 2000s with a coffee cart on Broadway Market, a Soho café called Flat White, and two world titles won in the same year by the people who then founded Square Mile.
What makes London its own place is where the roasting happens. The city never pushed its roasters out to the edge: they moved into Victorian railway arches in Bermondsey and Hackney, into a fire station in Brixton and a steelworks in Homerton, and the arches turned out to be perfect for a drum roaster. Add the Antipodeans, who brought all-day dining and the flat white, and a prison roastery that trains people for jobs on the outside, and you have a scene with more going on than most.
It is also a scene that talks about money. London roasters print farm-gate prices on bags, publish impact reports, and argue about the rising cost of green coffee and gas on festival panels. The London Coffee Festival at the Truman Brewery is where that argument happens every May.
Pasqua Rosée opens a coffee stall in St Michael's Alley, Cornhill. The coffeehouse century follows, and then tea wins.
Bar Italia opens on Frith Street in Soho, and lever-machine espresso comes to London.
Anita Le Roy and Nicholas Saunders start Monmouth Coffee in a Covent Garden basement, roasting and selling single origins by the pound.
Green importer Mercanta sets up in London, and independent roasters get a supplier for single-estate lots.
Ian Burgess starts a coffee cart on Broadway Market; it becomes Climpson & Sons and starts roasting in 2005.
Flat White opens on Berwick Street in Soho, and a drink becomes a habit.
James Hoffmann wins the World Barista Championship and Anette Moldvaer the World Cup Tasters title; Monmouth moves its roasting into the Maltby Street arches.
Hoffmann and Moldvaer found Square Mile in an East London arch.
Gwilym Davies wins the World Barista Championship; Prufrock opens on Leather Lane two years later.
Caravan opens on Exmouth Market with a roaster in the basement; Allpress arrives from New Zealand on Redchurch Street; London hosts the world barista final at ExCeL.
The first London Coffee Festival at the Truman Brewery; Workshop opens on Clerkenwell Road.
WatchHouse opens in a Bermondsey Street watch house; Brad Morrison founds Dark Arts in Homerton.
Assembly starts roasting in a Brixton fire station; the Ministry of Justice approaches the founders of Redemption Roasters.
Redemption installs its first roaster inside HMYOI Aylesbury; Square Mile takes a stake in Prufrock.
Can Eren founds Kiss the Hippo in Richmond.
WatchHouse starts roasting on a restored Probat in a Maltby Street arch.
Redemption opens a commercial roastery in Wembley while keeping its prison academies.
Three kinds of roaster share the city. The wholesale houses, Square Mile in Walthamstow and Redemption in Wembley among them, roast for cafés, offices and subscribers and rarely run a counter at the plant. The roastery-restaurants, Caravan in Islington, Ozone on Leonard Street, WatchHouse on Maltby Street, put the machine behind glass and serve breakfast in front of it. And the chains that roast for their own bars: Kiss the Hippo from Richmond, Monmouth from Bermondsey for its three shops.
Then the independents that give the city its texture. Climpson & Sons in London Fields, a B Corp with a training arch and a Broadway Market café. Workshop, roasting light and clean and supplying the grand hotels.
London roasts under its railways. Follow the viaducts and you find the machines.
The arches
Brick railway arches with the power and the ventilation a roaster needs: Monmouth at Spa Terminus, WatchHouse on Maltby Street, and cafés along Bermondsey Street.
The workshops
Climpson's Arch on Helmsley Place, Dark Arts in a converted steelworks, and the Broadway Market café where it started.
Roastery-restaurants
Ozone on Leonard Street, Allpress on Redchurch Street, Origin and WatchHouse in Spitalfields: big rooms, long menus, roasters on show.
The daytime corridor
Prufrock on Leather Lane, Rosslyn near Mansion House, Workshop in Holborn. Too expensive to roast here, so the coffee comes in from the arches.
The flat white: a double shot under fine microfoam in a small ceramic cup, the drink Soho imported in 2005 and the city never gave back. Oat milk is on every bar, often without a surcharge, and batch brew keeps the queue moving. On the shelf, Colombia, Brazil and Ethiopia lead London's listed origins, washed leads the processes with natural behind it.
The roast follows the milk. Londoners like their filter light and their espresso rounder, so the house blends, Square Mile's Red Brick, Climpson's Baron, Caravan's Daily, are built for chocolate and toffee under foam rather than the Nordic edge. The top shelf is where Gesha and Sudan Rume live, and where the prices climb. Bag sizes are a London quirk too: Square Mile sells in a larger bag, Assembly in a smaller one, Workshop in one sized for a letterbox. The live count stands at 35 decaf and 37 filter-friendly listings.
London's roasters price in pounds; the figures here are in euros so you can compare across the directory. They come from every London coffee currently listed with a price, not a sample we chose. The going rate today is €64 per kilogram, about €16 for a standard bag.
The ladder reads like this: house espresso blends around €55 per kilogram, washed East Africans and the first experimental lots from about €76 per kilogram, and the most expensive listing right now at €194 per kilogram. 277 coffees carry a price today. Nearly every roaster runs a subscription, and the bigger ones ship worldwide.
Based on the 277 London coffees currently listed with a price.
Every May · Truman Brewery, Brick Lane
The UK trade's big weekend since 2011: roasters' village, panels, Coffee Masters, and a ban on single-use cups across the tasting halls.
Heats and finals through the year
Barista, brewers, cup tasters: the national rounds that send Londoners to the world stage, as they did in 2007 and 2009.
Year round · Hackney, Brixton, Belgravia
Climpson's Academy, Assembly HQ and Workshop's Eccleston Street school run certified courses and public cuppings inside the roasteries.
Morning
Monmouth at Borough Market when it opens, then walk the arches to Maltby Street for WatchHouse's roastery.
Midday
Prufrock on Leather Lane for a flight of espressos and a look at who is training that day.
Afternoon
Broadway Market for Climpson's, Helmsley Place for the arch, Homerton for Dark Arts.
Second morning
The Brixton fire station for Assembly and Volcano, or the train out to Richmond for Kiss the Hippo.
Daily Roast currently lists 53 verified roasters based in London, with 297 coffees between them.
The live median across London's listed coffees is €64 per kilogram, about €16 for a standard bag. A quarter sit at or below €55 per kilogram, and the most expensive lot listed right now works out at €194 per kilogram.
Monmouth Street in 1978, in a basement, if you count single origins roasted by hand. The modern scene dates from 2002 to 2008: the Broadway Market cart, Flat White in Soho, and Square Mile.
Anita Le Roy has run Monmouth for nearly fifty years. James Hoffmann won the world barista title in 2007, co-founded Square Mile, wrote the atlas and helped design an espresso machine you will see on many London bars. Anette Moldvaer won the cup-tasting world title the same year and buys Square Mile's coffee. Gwilym Davies won the barista title in 2009 and co-founded Prufrock with Jeremy Challender. Ian Burgess pushed the cart that became Climpson's. Miles Kirby and Laura Harper-Hinton brought New Zealand all-day dining to Exmouth Market. Max Dubiel and Ted Rosner built Redemption with the prison service. Can Eren founded Kiss the Hippo. And Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood won the UK barista title three times and co-wrote the book on water.
The fire station
Assembly and Volcano share a Victorian fire station on Ferndale Road with their roasters and training labs.
The outer plants
Square Mile in Uplands Business Park, Redemption in Wembley: loading bays, lower rents, and the wholesale volume.
45 with mapped locations
Locations come from each roaster's public information. Daily Roast does not show Google ratings or reviews.
Because the Victorian viaducts have thick brick floors, plenty of power and easy ventilation, and because they were cheap when the roasters moved in. Bermondsey and Hackney have the busiest rows.
Bermondsey and Hackney for roasteries you can visit, Shoreditch for the roastery-restaurants, Clerkenwell and the City for the daytime cafés, Brixton for the fire station.
British trade bodies write speciality; most online searches and the global association write specialty. Roasters here use both. Daily Roast uses the global spelling.
A flat white, a long black or a batch filter. Oat milk is usually free; if you want cow's milk, say so. A lot of places are sit-in or bring-your-cup only.
Most of the bigger ones ship internationally and run subscriptions. Terms change often, so Daily Roast doesn't restate them; every roaster's profile links straight to its own shop.
Yes, mostly as batch brew at the counter and pourover at the roasteries. London's listed coffees marked for filter brewing or for both methods currently number 37.
Yes. The live count of decaf coffees from London roasters stands at 35, and water-process decafs are common.
A roaster that trains people inside prisons to roast and make coffee, born in 2016 with the Ministry of Justice, with a roaster inside Aylesbury from 2017, a chain of cafés, and a commercial roastery in Wembley since 2025.
London Coffee Festival weekend in May, when the whole UK trade is in Brick Lane. Otherwise any dry week; the arches don't mind the rain.