Brewing up the zeitgeist
You heard it here first
From coffee-shop socials and weird and wonderful drinks to a campaign fighting for indie cafes, Selena Young dishes three trends bubbling in the speciality coffee scene
Where coffee meets community
Speciality coffee drinkers are united by a love of quality brews, but increasingly that’s just the starting point. Today’s cafe crowd is as likely to be drawn together by mutual interests in natural wine and craft beer, creativity, wellness, sport and music, as it is by coffee.
Cafes are responding accordingly and morphing into vibrant hubs for socials that bring niche communities together. This crossover of fringe cultures isn’t new – previous trends include skateboarding and ‘spros, and cycling and batch brews – but London continues to extend the mash-up possibilities by creating interesting spaces where culture and community collide.
The capital is blooming with cafes that blur the line between coffee shop and bar. For example, High Ground in Islington serves expertly sourced wines on weekend evenings. The smart sipping takes place against a backdrop of curated retail shelves stocked with small-producer bottles and coffee bags. In Putney, from midweek to weekend, Ground Coffee Society flips from cafe to cosy wine bar, swapping limited-edition espressos for vino via its collaboration with The Wine Escape.
Other venues combine caffeination with cultural and creative pursuits. Perkyn’s in Tottenham complements its quality coffee with poetry workshops, creative sessions, open-mic comedy and craft beer. Sacred Grounds in Soho runs seasonal workshops such as flower arranging and garden festivals, while Volcano Coffee Works in Lambeth hosts retail pop-ups, ceramics classes and art exhibitions. Metronome in Morden takes the biscuit, though, by doubling as a recording studio and hosting live music and spoken-word events.
Coffee fans can also link up for palate-expanding cuppings at cafes and roasteries across the city. Ethical roastery Elsewhere Coffee invites the public into its roasting HQ for training sessions, cuppings, talks and gigs. Meanwhile, in Islington, Spring Valley Cafe hosts cuppings in its new tasting room, where it focuses solely on African coffees.
Coffee and wellness is of course a thing, and cafes like Sons in Hackney and Four Boroughs in Crystal Palace keep swarms of local runners fuelled with batch brews and cortados after their morning run clubs.
Beyond the flat white
Drinks menus are no longer straightforward; it’s now almost rare to find a speciality cafe in London that deals exclusively in classic coffee serves and standard cold alternatives.
Whether they’re zhuzhing up the hot chocolate as adaptogenic cacao, swapping iced tea for lion’s mane kombucha, or sidelining chai lattes in favour of ceremonial-grade matcha, baristas are being bold.
At Pandacup in Blackfriars, all kinds of curious caffeinated concoctions are on the menu. Highlights include the vegan bubble latte (a blend of freshly brewed coffee, tapioca pearls and oat milk), the cuban cortado and mazagran. This year’s matcha, it’s an iced coffee made with espresso, ice and lemon.
Seasonal and signature drinks add a playful edge at Gramndegrees in Hoxton, which flirts with flavour via its mango iced matcha, coconut-cloud coffee and dirty earl grey. Spring Valley’s Dawa blends Kenyan coffee with lime, ginger and honey, and Soto in Islington offers iced Milo and dulce de leche lattes, plus real-fruit syrup specials that rotate year-round.
Lip-tingling refreshment can be devoured at Juliets Quality Food in Tooting Broadway, thanks to its freddo cappuccino that layers single-origin espresso on ice with tonka-bean caramel and cold whipped milk foam. Try Simmos in Hackney for yuzu espresso soda.
Less funky, but by no means less fun, is the spike in coffee tasting flights. Like a playground for the palate, they feature flavour-bomb beans served three ways, such as flat white, pourover and single-shot espresso.
Flights often showcase different beans from multiple roasters and origins, or the exact same beans brewed in different ways, demonstrating how the prep method influences flavour. Experience the spectrum of textures, origins and profiles at coffee shops like Simmos, Snoozzze in Clerkenwell, Kaffeine in Fitzrovia and Velasquez & van Wezel in Crouch End.
Save our speciality coffee
For all the creativity, community and quality woven through London’s coffee scene, there’s a lot of pressure bubbling beneath the brew bar. Independent cafes are under increasing strain as a result of rising food costs, wages and energy bills, while playing on an uneven field when it comes to business rates and VAT.
In response, an indie-led movement is beginning to rumble. A partnership between Nick Cooper of the Indy Coffee Guide, Peter Dore-Smith of Kaffeine and John Richardson of The Cafe Expert has led to the launch of the Independent Coffee Collective. Its aim is to drive meaningful change and influence Government through campaigns like Save our Speciality (SOS).
Launched at the beginning of 2026, SOS is demanding fairer support for independent coffee shops and cafes, so they’re treated the same way as pubs. The argument is that, just like pubs, they support our communities, provide jobs and give our neighbourhoods and high streets character and vibrancy.
Big chains have the deep pockets to ride rough economic times, but the small, locally owned indies are vulnerable and easily wiped out. The result for coffee lovers could be having no alternative to the international corporations serving commoditiy-grade coffee. It’s also the small indies who, by serving speciality coffee, support small farmers at origin.
Momentum is building for the campaign as cafe owners across the capital and beyond send letters to their MPs, inviting them to visit and find out what it’s like on the ground. Shotsmiths in Beckenham and Tamp Coffee in Chiswick are just two examples championing the cause – both in person and on social.
Coffee drinkers can also help. Supporting your favourite local speciality spot can go beyond buying a cortado to-go. A like, comment or share on social media helps them boost visibility, or – even better – write to or tag your local MP, asking them to support the SOS campaign.
Use #soscoffeecampaign and #saveourspeciality. And keep an eye on the @indycoffeeguide and @independentcoffeecollective on Instagram for campaign updates.
