Black Pine is part of many a local’s daily routine and opened in the West End nearly a decade ago. The shop is two minutes from Kelvinbridge subway and serves espresso drinks, batch and hand-pour filter, seasonal specials and soft drinks. It will make an iced vanilla latte as happily as it will talk through the fermentation behind the coffee on the brew bar.

The roasting started in 2023, to give the shop full control over what it was serving. The team cups every coffee before buying it and has travelled to Guatemala to meet farmers, from private farms to cooperative smallholders. Each coffee is roasted on a small near-infrared electric roaster that gives precise control over the profile and room to experiment without wasting coffee. The retail shelf runs from espresso-suited roasts to experimental, fruit-forward coffees, and the house coffee, a washed lot from the El Carmen farm in the Acatenango Valley, is also sold as a weekly, monthly or quarterly subscription. Wholesale coffee is offered to cafés and offices.

The kitchen and bakery are upstairs. Black Pine makes everything in-house: bagels baked every morning, a changing selection of cakes, traybakes and cookies, with vegan and vegetarian options, and it supplies plain and filled bagels and traybakes to other cafés, events and offices. The shop also sells brew gear and a T-shirt.

Coffee on the shelf

Photograph: Black Pine Coffee Co.