PLOT Roasting roasts in Woolwich, in South East London. Its founder and green buyer, Matthew, co-founded a micro-chain of cafés in Brighton in 2009, then moved into roasting, training and consulting around London and the South East before starting PLOT in 2019. The name covers three meanings: the plot of land where coffee grows, the plot of each coffee’s story, and the plotting of temperature against time that makes a roast profile.

Every coffee is roasted on one of PLOT’s Loring roasters, each with its own profile. Traceability comes first in buying: for every coffee PLOT can name the grower, the farm and the harvest, and it pays producers directly where it can. In 2021 it launched ICON, a monthly subscription of rare coffees, from competition lots to unusual cultivars and experimental processing, which has passed seventy releases. Its annual Future Coffee collection, developed with growers and researchers at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, presents climate-resilient species and new hybrids, and included the first public presentation of Coffea × libex.

The roastery doubles as a coffee school. It teaches the full SCA Coffee Skills Program in barista skills, brewing, sensory, green coffee and roasting, plus the Q Grader course and its own masterclasses, and its trainers include Alexa, the 2024 UK Cup Tasters Champion. The roastery is a working production space, and online orders can be collected there.

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Coffee on the shelf

Photograph: PLOT Roasting