London's ethical coffee shops serving shots of conscience

It’s not just Russell Brand trying to change the world with a café. Susannah Butter visits London’s other ethical coffee shops
Coffee with a conscience: Old Spike in Peckham

At Peckham’s Old Spike Roastery coffee shop, a woman called Lucy makes a potent flat white — with a coffee kick and a smooth finish. The Old Spike is the latest addition to this area and fits right in — all exposed brick walls and pared-back aesthetic to provide respite for overstimulated coffee connoisseurs.

Lucy was the first employee at Old Spike and represents its mission to provide coffee with a conscience. The founders met her when she was selling The Big Issue outside London Bridge station, three years after arriving here from Romania. They used the Google Translate app to communicate. Now, in an act of flat-white philanthropy, they are helping her learn English and giving her training with Rob Dunne (of DunneFrankowski coffee).

The coffee shop’s co-founder, Richard Robinson, says coffee is a good partner for social enterprise work, filling the gaps left by official channels and programmes. “Coffee was a natural choice as our vehicle to help the homeless community as we could provide jobs for our beneficiaries relatively easily — training an individual to make a great cup of coffee felt more attainable than training them to be a chef, for example. It meant we could immediately help more people and provide more jobs, housing and make a change in their life right off the bat.”

Has beans: roasting in progress at Old Spike

Old Spike is a not-for-profit company and joins London’s other ethical coffee shops including Paper and Cup in Shoreditch, which provides barista training for those who are homeless and people recovering from addiction. The Red Route Café in Clapton, where Lindsay Lohan volunteered, helps people develop skills in all things food and drink, from office administration to baking. And then there’s Russell Brand’s Trew Era Café in Hoxton, which offers opportunities to people in rehabilitation and is funded from the profits of Brand’s book, Revolution.

Robinson’s business partner Cemel Ezel had the idea for Old Spike when he visited a silent tea house in Vietnam run by deaf and mute women. He says he was also influenced by coffee shops in New York where beans are roasted on site. “By roasting beans ourselves, we have full control of the quality of our offering and it opens up more job opportunities for the homeless community — we have a wholesale and subscription operation as well as longer-term opportunities to train staff to roast the coffee.”

They provide coffee subscriptions and want to start selling to offices. Ezel has a sales and commodities background, which complements Robinson’s advertising/strategy experience, and they are ambitious. It is going well — they had a visit from the Deputy Prime Minister of Thailand last week, who was impressed with the brews.

A bag of beans is £7.50, an espresso or americano £2 and all other brews £2.50. For sustenance alongside the caffeine there are baked goods from The South East Cakery and sourdough bread — now an obligatory offering for all independent coffee shops — from Breaking Bread, a microbakery in Nunhead that works with ex-offenders.

Robinson says: “The larger we become, the more homeless people we are able to help, so growing in size is a priority for us.”

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