The story of a London coffee company

The coffee industry in London is a fascinating market. Despite the proximity to France and traveling patterns of inhabitants who spend summers and the odd weekend on the continent, enjoying fine food, wine and espressos in Italy and its neighbours, the demand for a good cup of coffee in London has historically been largely, and surprisingly, absent. On the whole, we’re a bunch who is happy enough to queue at Starbucks for a grande caramel latte or cappuccino from Neros. That’s why I find the success of Monmouth Coffee inLondon so intriguing. How is it that a company that started sourcing and roasting coffee beans thirty years ago in Covent Garden, with virtually no local competition, come to produce coffee of such remarkable quality, thousands of miles away from its origin?

Most of us have enjoyed Monmouth Coffee in some way or another – either from its retail stores in Borough Market or Covent Garden, from its wholesale market cafés such as Flat White and Fernandez & Wells, or making a cup at home from their beans. Monmouth has not always been so well known, however. The business was established by the current director and owner, Anita Le Roy, in the late 1970s, after Neal’s Yard Wholefood Warehouse began selling large bags of beans in itsCovent Garden store. Recognising that there was a market to sell smaller sized bags for customers to brew at home, Anita established a roasting plant in the basement of a store nearby and began retailing the coffee to the public. This was the beginning of the Monmouth brand, and though the roasting plant outgrew theCovent Garden site (and is now located near London Bridge), the café and store is now more than ever an important retail arm of the coffee company.

Though the roasting plant and retail store had been operating successfully for almost twenty years by the mid nineties, Anita was frustrated at the lack of control over the selection of the imported coffee beans. “The importers provided very little information of the origin of the beans. The only information I really had was which country the beans were from and nothing about the specific farm or the quality.” So it was fortuitous for Anita to meet Stephen Hurst of Mercanta, who began sourcing and importing fine quality coffee beans into theUK , and a partnership developed. She explained, “It was a turning point for the company. We were then able to be much more selective and in one instance went toBrazil to cup dozens of different coffees from farms across the region. We purchased just one case which we felt was the highest quality and most interesting of the varieties.” The quality of the coffee increased significantly and Monmouth in turn has since been able to offer customers much wider choice for their coffee to take home.

So where to from here? For Monmouth, the focus will remain on sourcing and roasting high quality coffee, with perhaps one additional retail store to spur demand for the home brewer market. For farmers, Anita would like to see customers be prepared to pay a little more for better coffee so farmers can have a better deal across the industry, and an incentive to grow higher quality coffee. And speaking with Anita about the slowly growing competition in London, with new roasters such as Square Mile and more and more high quality cafes opening up across the city, I felt like I had got to the bottom of understanding why Monmouth had offered such good quality coffee for so long despite the absence of competition. “We want our customers to be discerning and enjoy good quality coffee. More competition is a good thing for us and it lifts the expectations of our customers.” With this in mind, coffee lovers in London have a lot to look forward to.