We started roasting and retailing coffee in 1978. At the beginning we roasted in the basement of our shop on Monmouth Street, Covent Garden, using rather old‑fashioned, direct-flame machines, first a small UNO and finally a 1930s Whitmee. Our aim was to source interesting coffees, roast them daily and encourage our customers to taste our coffees before they bought them. Almost thirty years later, having opened another shop in Borough Market, we found that we had outgrown our basement in Covent Garden and it was time to find a bigger space from which to roast. Late in 2007 we moved into our premises on Maltby Street, Bermondsey. We have converted three railway arches into a roasting site and wholesale offices and have a dedicated arch in which to train our staff and our wholesale customers.

Whitmee stopped making coffee roasters in the late 1960s, so for our site on Maltby Street we decided to move into the current century and installed two new machines. Our roasters are made by a relatively small manufacturer – Petroncini – in Bologna, Italy. Getting the very best out of any coffee roaster is a continual process and we re-profile our roasts each time we buy a new coffee and as our current coffees develop and change over time.