Workshop Coffee has seen a 40% year-on-year uplift in its wholesale business, with its new funding earmarked for expansion of its B2B sales, founder James Dickson tells MCA.
Following a successful management buyout process, the specialty coffee roaster completed a £1m funding round last week, which will also support the launch of its new website and ecommerce platform.
The round includes investments from multiple ‘new high net worth investors’ and Fleet-based investment fund The FSE Group.
Founded in 2011, Workshop has seen an exponential rise in business over the past few years, with the company now in the most exciting position in its history, Dickson says.
“We’re excited by the direct-to-consumer opportunity and have been developing our user platform and website for 12 months,” he says. “We’ve seen unprecedented growth post-Covid, which is exciting given how challenging the market is.”
The hotel market is of “huge interest” to Workshop, which supplies hotels such as Claridge’s, the Langham, Beaverbrook, and The Athenaeum, along with restaurants and cafés worldwide.
While the brand operates two coffee bars in London, the sites serve to “showcase the brand” rather than offer a dine-in experience.
“We’ve tried to avoid the café space for quite some time, despite the success of our original Clerkenwell café in 2011,” Dickson adds. “Wholesale has been so busy it would have been difficult to do both.”
The focus will continue to be on quality and the supply chain as Workshop becomes the “luxury brand of choice in the market,” he says.
“With wholesale, retail, and online, we were an omnichannel business before we realised we were an omnichannel business.
“We’ve certainly refined the business but integrity and quality has always underpinned it.”
