The LGC Mission

London Grade Coffee was born with a simple goal in mind: to deliver unpretentiously delicious speciality coffee to our customers, supporting our people and the planet along the way. For us, this means paying attention to every stage of the process. From our ethical approach to sourcing our single-estate coffee beans, to the barista that crafts your flat white.

Ethically Sourced Coffee

LGC strives to overturn the largely antiquated, and exploitative dynamic that has sadly endured between coffee growers and coffee buyers. This means paying our producers fairly. We source our coffee from The Nandanvan Estate in the Tamil Nadu region of South India – an overlooked origin in the speciality coffee world. We believe that its beans produce the finest espresso going.

Our relationship with the Estate is the fundamental cornerstone of LGC. We shun traditional practices of using third party buyers who, through monopoly power, leverage low prices. We choose to go direct to the Estate, not paying the bare minimum, but instead actively working to meet the needs of our producers. Importing ourselves thus forms the backbone of our ethical mission, resulting in a final cup that is not only delicious, but traceable, and fair.

Expertly Roasted

The next crucial point to which we direct our attention is the roasting of our coffee. We selected the in-house roastery at the Tate Modern, which has both the facilities and wealth of knowledge to expertly roast our beans in small batches to three levels:

Tokenhouse: Our flagship medium roast. Tokenhouse creates an espresso that is rich, smooth, and nutty, with notes of hazelnut, milk chocolate, and cardamom: presenting all the best qualities of the traditional espresso, without any of the bitterness.

Albion: Roasted lighter, with the inclusion of Peaberry. Albion is delicate, and lightly spiced, with notes of cardamom, pepper, and vanilla, making it perfect for filter.

Espresso: For those who like it dark. Our Espresso roast is taken darker, and features 40 percent Robusta. Expect notes of dark chocolate and caramel.

Professionally Delivered

The coffees found in our espresso bars all start from the same place: two shots of our Tokenhouse. From there, add water for a longer experience, or marry it with perfectly steamed milk – or Oatly! – for a pairing that has to be tasted in order to be believed. Smooth, rich, and perfectly balanced, our baristas take our coffee and make it sing, concluding the journey that our coffee has taken from the foothills of Tamil Nadu.