Leicester Coffee House Company

The current Leicester Coffee House Company opened its Granby Street coffee shop in October 2018, but frames itself as a direct successor to the original Leicester Coffee and Cocoa House Company, which began on the same street in 1877 with a stated aim of "combining commercial profit with the benefit of townspeople." The modern iteration started even smaller than most home-roasting stories: the founders began roasting on a popcorn maker before upgrading to a small home roaster, and only once the Granby Street shop opened did they acquire a 1kg Probat roaster for commercial-scale batches, which the company still runs "little and often" to keep stock fresh rather than roasting far ahead of demand. The social mission dates to the company's founding too -- it set out from day one to provide supported learning opportunities for young people, reporting "wonderful positive outcomes" before pausing the program during the pandemic as the business focused on survival. Today the shop operates with a staff of four and has taken on an unusual second identity: it hosts the Granby Street Therapists, a small group of independent talking-therapy practitioners, inside the same space. Few coffee shops combine an 1877 lineage claim, a popcorn-maker origin story, and an in-house therapy practice in one address.