The Milkman is an independent specialty coffee shop in the heart of Edinburgh’s Old Town. Its principle is that specialty coffee should be approachable and open to everyone, with baristas happy to help choose a cup or a bag of beans to brew at home. It opened in November 2015 when Mark, the owner, turned an old sweet shop into a café. The name is his great-grandfather’s: he was the last horse-drawn milkman in Huntly, up in Aberdeenshire, delivering milk to the town and the surrounding area. The silhouette in the logo comes from a souvenir of Glasgow’s Empire Exhibition in 1938, when he was 40. A century-old sign above the door still reads “cigarettes”; the shop does not sell them. The Milkman now has two shops on the same street in the Old Town.

On espresso The Milkman serves a specially selected, exclusive coffee from the local Edinburgh roastery Obadiah, which delivers the beans in plastic tubs that are collected each week, washed and used again. The shelf, and the filter on rotation, carry local and international roasters, among them Girls Who Grind Coffee, The Brew Project, Five Elephant, Bonanza, Cloud Picker, Ditta Artigianale, Scarlett, RoundHill and La Cabra. Beside a morning selection of flaky pastries, the cakes come from local bakeries: carrot cake from KiwiBakes, peanut butter cookies from Fieldworks and gluten-free bakes from Glutteny. The shop aims for at least one vegan and one gluten-free option every day.

The shop is small, welcomes dogs and takes no reservations. It has Wi-Fi and can be hired for events. In 2019 it won the LUXLife Global Hospitality Award for the most eco-friendly specialty coffee shop in Edinburgh. Its packaging is compostable and plant-based, its waste is sorted with Changeworks, leftover food goes out through Too Good To Go, the counter is built from century-old Canadian pitch pine taken from a mill floor and the shelves from old scaffolding boards, and used grounds go into locally made coffee candles. It also sells branded KeepCups, ceramic takeaway cups by Melisa Dora and mugs by Julija Pustovrh, candles and brass moka-pot jewellery online.

Coffee on the shelf

Photograph: The Milkman