Monmouth Coffee Company

Monmouth Coffee Company has been roasting specialty coffee in London since 1978, when founder Anita Le Roy opened what would become one of the oldest specialty coffee operations in the United Kingdom. Based in Covent Garden, the company built its reputation not on scale but on a single-minded focus on traceable, farm-direct sourcing at a time when that approach was virtually unknown in British coffee culture.

Over nearly five decades, Monmouth has grown from a single shop into a small group of London cafes while maintaining a deliberately independent, non-commercial posture — the kind of operation that refuses analytics cookies because it means it. The company has long maintained relationships with individual growers, estates, and cooperatives, and its staff make regular farm visits throughout the year, talking directly with producers about cultivation, processing, and trade terms. That direct-trade ethic predates the specialty coffee movement's adoption of the language.

Monmouth sources across origins — current offerings include a natural-processed Arara from Clovis Mello's certified-organic Terra de São Francisco farm in Minas Gerais, Brazil; a washed Familia Coronel Villanueva from Huabal, Peru; and a funky natural from Tibebu Roba in Ethiopia. Flavor notes skew toward the specific and honest: 'dried fruit, molasses, low acidity, full body, dark roast' for the Brazilian; 'papaya, pineapple, funky acidity, syrupy body' for the Ethiopian. The roastery also sources organic whole-cane sugar from a Costa Rican producer it has worked with for twenty years — a detail that signals how seriously it takes long-term supply relationships.