How to build a £30M coffee shop

What happens when you run a coffee shop like a startup?

Grind grew to a £30m business in 10 years and now they

• Have 14 London locations

• Are expanding across the U.K (and eyeing up the Middle East)

• Have mainstream D2C supermarket distribution

Just a perfect example of running a hospitality business excellently and parlaying brand loyalty in smart ways.

Here are 3 things they got right:

Don’t be rubbish or boring (most are usually at least one). ‘Wow’ customers for cult fandom

From their first location, Grind focussed on getting the basics right (which many independents routinely fail to do)

• “Best in class” specialty coffee

• Spotless shops

• Top service + low wait times

And to deliver that repeatable, predictable service, you need systems. Which are often what suck any personality out of your brand.

But Grind found this gorgeous middle way. They snuck their venture-capital-esque efficiency beneath a highly ‘Instagrammable’ paint job.

This well-oiled machine still felt like it had a real personality—from the topical rotating signage to the recording studio in the attic.

It was ‘cool’ to go to Grind. So people shared it all over social.

This is huge for brick-and-mortar hospitality—you’re getting thousands of eyeballs on your business from precisely the right local audience

If you can manage that, you’re in for a viral loop:

1. New customers discovered Grind through social shares

2. Exceptional in-store experience exceeded expectations

3. Delighted customers shared their own content

4. Repeat

With this initial cult following, Grind scaled rapidly through several rounds of crowd-funding, all while charging prices that left them a solid margin.

Partner with people who actually have your customers

Most coffee shops partner with local bakeries.

Grind collabed with Green Day, Hello Kitty, Lazy Oaf and Soho House….

Because they all target the same customer archetype:

Middle-class consumers who willingly pay premium prices for quality/comfort and brand.

Frankly, hipsters.

No wasted spend going after people who wouldn’t get the value of expensive coffee + paying for ‘cool’.

These are partnerships with KNOWN brands, which gives them more social proof than most independents—but also feel niche enough to distance themselves from the mainstream high street coffee brands.

Each partnership gave Grind social proof for the next opportunity, so they could spiral up the food chain of bigger businesses quickly—now landing distribution with behemoths like British Airways and Tesco.

Expanding into shoulder niches (without having a panic attack)

Grind started as a hospitality business - but is now a D2C giant too. Which usually brings in a load of logistical challenges.

Want to sell coffee machines? That's a manufacturing nightmare, with about a million ways to mess up your brand if you get it wrong.

But Grind partnered with Sage Appliances, who already know how to do all that stuff.

This way, they could test a premium bean-to-cup machine in their lineup without building a factory.

It’s a way lower-risk way for Grind to test related products with their audience. They're effectively running paid market research through their partners.

If it works, great—scale it up. If it doesn't? Minimal time and money wasted.

This approach lets Grind stay focused on what made them special in the first place—being a damn good hospitality business

Because at the end of the day, it's that excellence that earned them the right to play in all these other spaces like Nespresso pods and canned cold drinks.