Constant or Conscious: Consumption in London’s Coffee Scene
LONDON, UK – As those close to me know of the many loves in my life, coffee stands tall and proud, but is constantly edged out by my undying passion for food. Recently, however, the hierarchy has shifted. Coffee is on a path to sustainability. The vast world of coffee has been plagued by unsustainable consumption and farming practices since the fall of the International Coffee Agreements in 1989. These agreements managed the supply chain of the coffee industry to sustainably maintain agricultural production and fair wages for farmers. Though this inherently goes against traditional free-market economics, it enshrined sustainability alongside coffee production and demand. Following the demise of these agreements, firms like Starbucks, Nestle, and Folgers were able to levy their capitalist tendencies in the coffee industry; drastically increasing the supply of coffee in regions like Indonesia, China while paying little attention the sustainability needed to cultivate this special crop for generations to come.
Around 20 years ago, however, came a new wave in coffee, one that not only prioritized access and distribution, but one that paid special attention to the farming conditions, flavour profiles, and sustainability of coffee. This third wave, known as “Specialty Coffee” is what you might associate with the $7 latte that you got from a hip cafe with an overly enthused barista, armored in Carhartt, and adorned with a beanie. Stereotypes aside, this wave has been crucial in cultivating renewed interest in the art of coffee-making and more importantly, how to preserve the crop against seemingly insurmountable climate-challenges. For context, coffee must be grown in very fertile soil in high-altitudes and benefits greatly from crop rotation. This means that farmers are often discouraged from maintaining sustainable coffee growth practices given its high costs and generally cheap sticker price – brought about by firms like Starbucks, Nestle, and Folgers. With specialty coffee, however, farmers have felt far more represented not only in the money they receive but in the care they issue towards their crops.
Over the past semester, I had the privilege to expand my understanding of the home of specialty coffee, London. Like the city itself, London’s coffee scene is defined by globalized attitudes and refined palettes, welcoming a new wave of attentive, specialty coffee. Over my numerous visits to London’s cafes, three stood out to me. My first venture was to Prufrock Coffee in Farringdon, where the influences of James Hoffman, international Barista champion and undoubted coffee-guru, are evident. Not only does the cafe source beans from sustainability-driven farms in Ethiopia, Brazil, Colombia, and more, they are pioneering coffee innovations simultaneously. In reports published by Hoffman and the Royal Kew Gardens, a new strain of coffee (eg. Arabica and Robusta), Stenophylla, was found to be the future of the crop. With rising temperatures and sea levels, maintaining cool climates and high-altitudes – critical to coffee farming – is challenging, this new strain however has been cultivated from wild-coffee in West Africa to not only taste fantastic but also grow in more temperate climates. In my visit to the Kew Gardens, I learned more about this new strain and gained hope that coffee may not succumb to the negative externalities of capitalism.
My second cafe of choice, Kiss the Hippo, is hard to miss if you live or travel between London’s chic neighborhoods like Coal Drop Yards, Shoreditch, Fitzrovia, Mayfair, and more. Plastered proudly across all their shops and signage is “London’s first carbon negative coffee”. Intrigued by the claim, I interviewed Barista, Savannah, who detailed the numerous efforts taken to get to this coveted place. She spoke about their reluctance to sign-with mass-scale farms, ensuring special attention to farming practices, supplying only compostable paper and plastics, recycling used coffee into biofuel, and partnering with food-waste challengers like Too Good to Go. Not only did I leave the cafe with a lovely iced americano but also a sense that my purchases can lead to sustainable actions.
My third and final café was Origin Coffee. Despite their many locations across London, I only ventured into their King’s Cross shop out of sheer necessity (a dire need of coffee to fuel finals week). I was pleasantly surprised with some of the best Costa Rican espresso I’ve ever had and also some fascinating notes from Barista, Chaz. After asking him whether Origin promotes any sustainability practices he ushered me to their menu, proudly portraying the Certified B Corp status. He then detailed Origin’s many efforts to curb waste and maintain high-farming standards, but most interestingly he noted that their coffee shipments come to the UK via sail-boats! This revelation fascinated me, assuming that sail boats were only delegated to the ultra-wealthy or pirate-ship reenactments.
Ultimately, traversing through London’s diverse coffee scene left me with more than just my fancy cup of morning joe, but instead with a renewed sense of optimism that everyone’s favorite and normalized drug is here to stay with the use of truly innovative sustainability measures across inspiring cafes.
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