Old Spike Roastery

The social enterprise framing is real and operationally embedded at Old Spike, not a brand narrative applied to a conventional coffee business. Richard Robinson built the mission into the founding structure: skills training and employment for people experiencing homelessness is not a charitable arm of the company, it's the reason the company exists. That structural commitment means the bar for the coffee being genuinely good is higher — if the quality isn't there, the social mission loses its commercial vehicle.

The 70% direct sourcing proportion is unusually high. Direct trade at that proportion requires more time, more relationship management, and more operational complexity than buying through importers. It also tends to produce a more distinctive range, because you're selecting coffees based on specific farm relationships rather than importer catalogues.

The Change Please sister brand, which operates coffee carts across London, extends the mission into a different format. The carts serve as training environments and employment pathways, and they distribute Old Spike coffee to locations and audiences that a roastery-cafe model wouldn't reach.

The cafe network across London — from Peckham Rye to The Shard — reflects a deliberately wide geographic reach. Old Spike are not positioned as a neighbourhood roaster with a cult following in one postcode; they've built a network that operates across different economic zones and demographics of the city.

For Cuppd users, Old Spike is worth following both for the coffee quality and for the context it adds to your tasting history. Their direct-sourced range tends toward the honest and clear rather than the experimental and extreme — solid coffee that doesn't need any narrative to justify it.