What Happened to Abe & Co?
(And how can you save your favourite local roaster?!)
The Rise and Fall of a Speciality Favourite: a Cautionary Tale.
Something’s brewing in the UK coffee industry, and not in the usual way. Abe & Co Coffee Roasters, one of the country’s most respected specialty roasters, has closed it's doors for the last time.
If you’re a coffee lover, café owner, or someone in the industry, you might be wondering: What happened? Why did one of the most exciting independent roasters disappear?
The answer is complex, but it highlights the cocktail of issues that’s holding back independent cafés from reaching their potential. When researching this blog post we highlighted the following; significant and unusually sharply rising green bean costs, increasing wages and national insurance, skyrocketing utilities, and a market still gripped by low quality coffee reselling companies and their mafia-style contracts. Unfortunately, these agreements lock in coffee shops and stop them from improving their offerings, adapting to market shifts, or supporting local roasters – all while profiting hugely from low-grade coffee at inflated prices.
This Journal entry started life as a deep dive into Abe & Co’s closure, but as we learned we realised why it's so important to tell the story. It’s a cautionary tale about why cafés deserve better, why resellers are no longer the answer and, most importantly, why independent roasters must unite to ensure better coffee, better business, and a better future for all.
TL;DR – What Happened to Abe & Co Coffee Roasters?
- Abe & Co have closed their doors, highlighting the growing pressures on independent UK roasters.
- There is a life raft for floating Abe & Co. Customers here
- Rising costs, reseller contracts, and market shifts are squeezing cafés and small roasters alike.
- Coffee resellers and mafia style contracts, limiting choice, quality and flexibility.
- The future of UK coffee is at a crossroads—it’s time to rethink how cafés source their coffee.
Do you know what’s in your coffee contract? It might be time to ask. ☕
The Harsh Reality of UK Speciality Coffee in 2025
Running a coffee roastery has always been a balancing act, but 2025 has been particularly brutal. Soaring costs, volatile coffee prices, and rising business overheads have put small roasters under extreme pressure. The price of green coffee alone has jumped over 33% in the last year, making every sack of green beans significantly more expensive than it was in 2023. Add to that skyrocketing energy bills and increasing wages (which is in some regards a positive, but puts extreme pressure on the bottom line when profits are squeezed), and you have an industry at breaking point.
For café owners, things aren’t much easier. The UK’s cost-of-living crisis has changed spending habits. While people are still drinking coffee, they’re watching their spending. Value for money is king – and that’s where things get tricky. How do you balance affordability with quality? How do you keep up in a market where every percentage point on pricing makes a difference?
And this is where coffee resellers come into play – offering what looks like an easy solution but often ends up being a trap.
Coffee Resellers: The Contract That Keeps Cafés Stuck
If you’ve ever walked into a café and seen a shiny espresso machine with a brand’s logo on it, chances are you're seeing the work of the middlemen. Coffee Resellers. Their pitch to café owners is simple: We’ll provide your machine, grinder, and even training – all you have to do is sign a contract and buy our coffee.
This is how it works.
You are an aspiring entrepreneur and soon-to-be café owner, and as such you contact a local coffee company. Let's call them CoffeePros.
You’re an aspiring entrepreneur, ready to launch your dream café. You reach out to a local coffee supplier—let’s call them CoffeePros—and they have just the solution to get you started. Great!
They offer you a free espresso machine or grinder, a piece of kit that has a price tag of £3,000 on it! (In reality, it's more like £1500, but who cares... No upfront cost? Sounds like a win!)
In return, you sign a contract agreeing to buy all your coffee from CoffeePros for the next three years at say £27 per kilo, subject to a yearly rise in line with inflation. There's a minimum monthly order—so you’re committed to a set volume, even if things get tough and the customers dry up... but that's not going to happen, right?!
Then it all starts to unravel. You learn that the shiny espresso machine isn't actually yours until the end of the 3 year period, and the coffee you’re getting? Mass-produced, low-grade, dark roasted, mostly robusta. You take to the internet, and find out that low grade actually means defects… and defects mean insect damage, disease, rotten beans and over-ripe coffee beans. Yuckkk.
By now it's too late. You're locked in. The coffee you receive every week comes from an enormous industrial facility churning out thousands of tonnes per year.
Your friends at CoffeePros never even see or touch the beans before they land in your café, let alone roast, but you've come this far and you're determined to make it work.
Fast forward three years. Your once-shiny espresso machine is now worn down and has certainly seen brighter days. CoffeePros come knocking with an upgrade offer: trade in your old machine for the latest model. They’ll take it off your hands, and deliver a brand new shiny turbo pro espresso 3000 machine... and lock you up for another 3 gruelling years. Meanwhile, your £500 traded in machine is quickly refurbished and passed on to the next café owner for £2,000 as ‘like new.’
And just like that, the cycle repeats with the next eager business owner, and the empire grows.
And that’s how it works.
It’s a fantastic business model—for CoffeePros alike. But for café owners? The downsides are obvious. The coffee is overpriced and underwhelming, there’s no flexibility to switch to a local roaster, and getting out of the contract can cost thousands of pounds.
Meanwhile, customers are being served the same uninspired, bulk-roasted coffee, unaware of the better options that cafés could offer if they had the choice. I've taken the liberty of listing the downsides below, incase I haven't ranted quite enough yet.
- The coffee prices are inflated – resellers charge well above market value per kilo to cover the ‘free’ machine cost. Leaving customers thinking "Why does everyone else's coffee taste better than mine?"
- The quality is often average at best – bulk-bought, mass-roasted coffee that doesn’t evolve or improve. These factories produce tens of thousands of tonnes per year. Your coffee isn't special.
- There’s no flexibility – cafés can’t experiment with guest roasters or new blends without breaking their contract. Note: Your local roaster is probably really really good
- Getting out is expensive – cancellation clauses often come with hefty penalties, and things can get nasty. Leading to the inevitable search "How do I get out of my contract?"
It raises the questions: what value are these resellers really adding? who benefits from this model – the café, the customer, or just the reseller? and more importantly "how does this relate to the closure of Roasters like Abe & Co?"
Why Abe & Co’s Closure Matters
Abe & Co Coffee Roasters were a speciality coffee company like many others. They were known for sourcing incredible coffee, pushing quality boundaries, and working directly with cafés to help them thrive. But the point is that it could have been one of any number of other roasters too. Your favourite local roastery could be next.
Their closure is a wake-up call. It highlights the unsustainable pressures that independent roasters face when coffee resellers dominate the market. Every café locked into a reseller contract is a café that could have been partnered with a local, quality-driven roaster’s coffee – but instead, they’re bound by pricing, restrictions, low quality, and a lack of choice.
And here’s the harsh reality: if coffee resellers continue to tighten their grip, more beloved roasters will disappear.
Cafés and Customers Deserve Better Coffee
At its core, coffee is about community, creativity, and connection– and that’s exactly what Speciality Coffee stands for. We believe that Cafés should be able to:
✅ Choose the best coffee for their customers, not just what’s tied to a contract.
✅ Experiment with guest roasters and seasonal coffees to keep things fresh.
✅ Work with local suppliers to create more sustainable supply chains.
✅ Charge fairly for better-quality coffee, rather than covering hidden machine costs.
Consumers are already seeking out better, more transparent coffee – so why should cafés be stuck serving outdated blends from resellers who don’t even roast their own coffee?
The Future of UK Coffee: A Huge Opportunity.
The collapse of a great roastery like Abe & Co is a sad loss— but it’s also a bold signal. It tells us that the industry must change, that outdated models can’t survive forever, and that independent roasters must work together to give cafés a real alternative.
As independent roasters, we feel the pressure too. But we also feel enormous support from our customers, fellow coffee professionals, and the farmers who rely on us. That’s what drives us forward.
So let’s take this example as an opportunity to create something better. A future where cafés are free to serve great coffee, where farmers earn fairly, and where independent roasters thrive rather than struggle.
What’s Next?
- If you run a café, start asking questions. What’s in your contract? Is it the best deal for you and your customers? Could you work with a local roaster instead?
- If you’re a coffee lover, support independent coffee. Seek out cafés that showcase great roasters, ask where the coffee is from, who roasted it, and spread the word.
- If you’re a roaster, let’s talk. The time for working in silos is over. It’s time to collaborate, share knowledge, and push for a stronger independent coffee scene.
Specialty coffee in the UK is at a crossroads. The question is: will we let outdated resellers keep controlling the market, or will we build a better way forward?
It’s time to rethink coffee – for cafés, for customers, and for the future.
So next time you sip on a flat white, ask yourself—does this coffee have a story worth telling? If not, maybe it's time to find one that does.
References;
Tea and Coffee
World Coffee Portal
Carlini Coffee
The true downside of Coffee Contracts
Stir Tea Coffee
Shoppers prioritise Transparency Study
How important is Traceability?