Why Stag’s House

Stag’s House Coffee started during the pandemic, at a moment when life felt uncertain. Like many others, I suddenly found myself without a job and facing a difficult decision: stay in London and fight for a future here, or go back home and start over.

I decided to stay.

At the time, I realised that while I understood coffee, hospitality, and café operations, the business side of things was something I needed to learn properly. So I enrolled in a three-year degree at Buckinghamshire New University to study International Business Management.

During my studies, I worked part-time with different roasteries across London, helped friends in cafés, and spent every spare moment learning more about coffee, hospitality, logistics, branding, and people. While studying, I made a decision that many would probably consider risky — I invested my student loan into starting Stag’s House Coffee.

From the beginning, the vision was simple:
to create a coffee company and café that truly reflects my view of coffee and hospitality.

I wanted to roast coffee for sweetness, clarity, and balance — coffees that could bridge the gap between neighbourhood cafés and speciality coffee. A place where the relationship from farm to cup is respected, where coffee is treated with care, and where guests experience something more meaningful than simply grabbing a takeaway drink on the way to work.

Hospitality has always been at the centre of everything I do.

I have worked in hospitality since I was 17 years old, and to me, a café should feel welcoming, calm, and human. That is why Stag’s House was designed around interaction and experience. The coffee bar sits at the centre of the space so guests can see the craft behind every drink, ask questions, discover new coffees, and connect with the people preparing them.

Every coffee we serve is carefully selected and roasted by myself. Whether it is espresso, filter coffee, matcha, hot chocolate, or cold brew, every product in the shop is chosen with quality in mind.

Building Stag’s House has been a one-man journey in many ways. My degree helped me create the entire brand myself — from the website, labels, and logo, to the marketing and overall vision. It was not easy, but I never wanted to hand over the dream to investors focused only on numbers rather than people, hospitality, and experience.

The road has not been easy.

Finding customers who believed in my skills, managing logistics, sourcing coffees, roasting, branding, negotiating contracts, and building relationships from scratch has been one of the biggest challenges of my life.

In 2022, I secured my first contract for a private coffee pop-up with a company inside the same building where the café exists today. From there began a two-year journey of negotiations for the retail space, raising capital for the fit-out, and investing in some of the best equipment in the coffee industry to ensure we could deliver the quality we envisioned.

Being an independent speciality coffee shop today is incredibly difficult.

The reality is that small independent businesses face rising costs from every direction — rent, taxes, utilities, payroll, equipment, ingredients, and green coffee prices continue to increase year after year. At the same time, independent cafés are expected to compete with large chains that operate at completely different scales and costs.

Most people do not realise that speciality coffee itself is expensive long before it reaches the cup. Large corporations can buy coffee at prices far below what small roasters pay. Roasting itself comes with loss — nearly 20% of the coffee’s weight disappears during roasting through moisture loss alone.

And yet, quality remains non-negotiable for us.

We pay fair wages because great hospitality comes from great people. A café is not built only by equipment or branding — it is built by the team behind the bar, by the conversations with guests, and by the care put into every drink served.

At Stag’s House, prices reflect the work, quality, and craftsmanship behind what we do:
premium coffees sourced from around the world, careful roasting, high-end equipment, and a team that genuinely cares about the guest experience.

This café was built to be more than just a coffee stop.

It is a place where you can discover coffee, sit down and slow down, speak with passionate baristas, attend cuppings, learn something new, or simply enjoy a calm moment in the middle of London.

Every bit of support truly matters to independent businesses like ours.

So whether you are here for a quick espresso, a carefully brewed filter coffee, or just a conversation at the bar — thank you for being part of the journey.

And if you would like to know more about coffee, roasting, or what we do, please speak to our baristas or to me when I’m in the café — which is usually every day.

Welcome to Stag’s House.