Coffee with a conscience

“REGARDLESS OF WHAT THE COMMODITY MARKET IS DOING, ONCE WE’VE SET A PRICE, IT NEVER GOES DOWN”

Words: Tomé Morrissy-Swan

Britons are drinking more coffee than ever. The number of coffee shops more than doubled between 2007 and 2018 and continues to rise, with cafes set to overtake pubs by 2030. Whether brewed at home or bought from a specialty coffee shop, for millions of us, no day goes by without a cup.

But, like most global commodities, coffee faces several threats. Climate change is threatening harvests with droughts and floods. In Brazil, the world’s largest producer, a late frost in 2021 severely damaged yields, pushing prices up around the world. Recent weather-related shortages have seen prices soar to a near 50-year high. On the social side, producers often see meagre financial returns.

But many coffee companies in the UK are striving to do things better, whether buying sustainably grown coffee and paying farmers a premium or using coffee as a way of effecting social change in Britain. Here, two Borough Market-based coffee shops explain their approach to serving coffee with a conscience.

Monmouth Coffee Company

Environmentally speaking, coffee is a high-impact product – and a luxury at that. It is grown in large quantities, heavily processed, transported around the globe, packaged (possibly several times), and requires the boiling of water for each cup. “If you look at the carbon footprint of beef and cheese, coffee’s not far below that,” says Finn Andres, Monmouth Coffee Company’s sustainability lead.

Monmouth has been selling coffee since 1978. From working with small farms ideally using environmentally friendly methods, to using renewable energy at its cafes, it tries to do things the right way, says Finn.

Monmouth’s core principles are quality, transparency and being socially sustainable. The coffee must be of a high calibre; they must know where it has come from; and they strive to “pay farmers properly”.

That begins with working closely with producers. As a commodity, the coffee market is volatile, and growers are often paid poorly. Monmouth has long used a direct trade model, establishing close relationships with farmers, mostly in Latin America or Africa, and making long-term price commitments. “They can be sure that, regardless of what the commodity market is doing, next year they have this price, normally well above the commodity price,” Finn explains. “Once we’ve set a price, it never goes down.”

Transport is the next hurdle. Monmouth’s coffee arrives via container ship which, though using diesel, is “by far the lowest-impact way”, short of sailing ships. In the UK, Monmouth exclusively uses electric vehicles and its premises are run on renewable energy where possible – the roasters, currently, are gas-powered. Milk is purchased from a Somerset farm with “very low impact for dairy – but it’s still dairy,” says Finn.

Packaging is Finn’s biggest bugbear, and the hardest thing to get right. Coffee requires a barrier to protect it from the elements; it would spoil quickly in a paper bag. Monmouth’s packaging is not currently recyclable. “Our packaging needs to change, it can definitely be improved,” Finn admits.

Arguably the business’s biggest recent change has been doing away with disposable cups. Around 2.5 billion are used each year in the UK, with millions thrown away – very few are recycled – each day. Since 2022, customers have had to bring their own, drink in, or pay a £5 deposit for a reusable cup, which can be swapped for another on their next visit. It has gone down “surprisingly well”, says Andres, and has barely impacted sales. “In terms of how quickly customer behaviour changed, it was really fast.” Several cafes have been in touch for Monmouth’s help in following suit. It shows how small changes can soon make a big change.

Change Please

It all started in 2015 with a coffee cart in Covent Garden. Founder Cemal Ezel had been away travelling and, on returning to London, was struck by the levels of homelessness he saw. According to Crisis, the number of people sleeping rough in the UK in 2023 was 120 percent up on 2010. Change Please is fighting it.

The social enterprise trains people experiencing homelessness to Speciality Coffee Association standards, with a dedicated academy in Peckham and 10 retail sites across London. It has helped hundreds earn the skills to enter employment.

Candidates are referred to Change Please by bodies including the NHS or charities. They undertake a 12-week programme including barista training at one of the London cafes – including Borough Market. Trainees are paid the London Living Wage and given support with everything from mental health to housing. All profits go towards funding the programme.

The social enterprise also runs the Driving to Change initiative. A repurposed double decker bus visits London boroughs, working alongside councils to provide support, from dental care and banking assistance to a coffee and a chat. Last year it made 4,000 trips, provided 1,091 haircuts, 878 dental visits and gave out 84 mobile phones. It also refers candidates to the barista training scheme. “It’s a vital service that goes out every day of the week,” says Tara Cunningham, Change Please’s head of marketing.

For Tara, coffee is an especially good medium for training. “Anyone can be taught it, you don’t need any prior experience,” she explains. “It teaches many other skills. As well as barista skills, it’s very interactive – you’re speaking to people, dealing with the public, working with the team.”

In 2024, 231 people went through the barista programme, 54 moving on to full-time employment. While many work as baristas, others have moved into other roles, including in IT. Tara believes a lot more can be done on a national level to tackle homelessness, but “we think that empowering people to get back into employment is the right way to do it”.