How we work

Research guide, then visit-verified

Every shop in this edition is a research guide entry. That means the notes were compiled from the shop's official site and other named sources, on a stated date. We have not necessarily been. We do not describe the taste of a cup, the feel of the room, the length of the queue, or the friendliness of the staff unless that is a visit-verified note.

A visit-verified badge will be used only after a real visit, with a date. The badge exists in the site's code and stays off until then. We will not invent a visit, and we will not write “we popped in” or “our favourite seat” for a shop nobody on the project has walked into.

Photos

We do not copy photographs from Google, Instagram, Tripadvisor or a shop's website and save them as our own. A picture a business posts of its own store is still their copyright. Where a photograph appears on this site, it comes from one of three places:

• An openly licensed image on Wikimedia Commons (CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA — not NC or ND), shown with a credit to the photographer, the licence, and Wikimedia Commons. We only use an image when we are confident it shows that shop or that part of London.
• A shop's own Instagram. We link the account published on the shop's official website. A couple of pages also show a specific public post, using Instagram's official embed code, only where that post URL appeared on the shop's own site. The embed script loads only when that section is on screen.
• Photographs from Google's Place Photos service, fetched live in the browser when a Google Maps API key has been configured. Those photographs are not stored on this site. Each one is shown with the required “Google Maps” credit, the photographer's attribution, and a link to the source on Google Maps. Until a key is set, this path does nothing and no request is made to Google.

If none of those is available for a shop, the page keeps a simple illustrated placeholder. We still hope to add our own visit photographs, and photographs with a shop's permission, later.

Image credits

The photographs currently on the site are from Wikimedia Commons. Each is also credited under the image itself.

• Flat White, Soho — Photo: Bex Walton, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
• Algerian Coffee Stores, Soho — Photo: Ewan-M, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
• Kaffeine, Fitzrovia — Photo: Bex Walton, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
• Monmouth Coffee, The Borough — Photo: Bex Walton, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
• Prufrock Coffee, Leather Lane — Photo: Bex Walton, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
• Prufrock Coffee, Leather Lane — Photo: Bex Walton, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
• Rosslyn Coffee, Queen Victoria Street — Photo: Bex Walton, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
• Rosslyn Coffee, Queen Victoria Street — Photo: Bex Walton, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
• Caravan, King's Cross — Photo: Bex Walton, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
• Caravan, King's Cross — Photo: Bex Walton, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
• Origin Coffee, The British Library — Photo: Bex Walton, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
• Climpson & Sons, Broadway Market — Photo: Roy Katzenberg, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
• 15grams, Greenwich — Photo: Bex Walton, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
• 15grams, Greenwich — Photo: Bex Walton, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
• Soho — Photo: Chris Whippet, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
• Covent Garden, Trafalgar Square and the Strand — Photo: David Iliff, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
• Fitzrovia and Oxford Circus — Photo: Chris Whippet, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
• Marylebone — Photo: DiscoA340, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
• Borough and London Bridge — Photo: Jeremy Keith, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
• The City and Farringdon — Photo: Nick-D, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
• King's Cross, St Pancras and Euston — Photo: Stephen McKay, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
• Victoria and Belgravia — Photo: No Swan So Fine, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
• Shoreditch and Spitalfields — Photo: Andy Li, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
• Broadway Market — Photo: Robert Lamb, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
• Notting Hill — Photo: DiscoA340, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
• Camden — Photo: Mr Ignavy, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
• Greenwich — Photo: Dmitry Tonkonog, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Other people's reviews

We will not copy the text of reviews from Google, Tripadvisor or similar platforms. If we have a sourced, dated rating we may show the score and the number of reviews, with a link out so you can “see reviews on Google” (or wherever they were checked). This edition does not show third-party ratings, because we did not have sourced, dated figures ready at launch.

Hours and prices

Opening hours come from official pages where we could find them. If hours were not published, we say so. Bean prices are official list prices, with the bag size, the date, and a source link. Where we show a price per 250g or per kilogram for a bag of a different size, it is labelled as calculated. Prices exclude shipping unless we say otherwise.

Ads and affiliate links

There are no advertisements and no live affiliate links in this edition. A couple of roasters have public affiliate programmes, which are marked in the code as placeholders only. If those links are ever switched on, or if a feature is paid for, we will label them clearly, up front — not only in the footer.

Who this is not

This site does not publish a personal biography, and it does not use a personal contact address. We do not speak for any café, roaster, or other organisation. If a fact looks wrong, please check the official shop link before you travel; we will keep re-checking official pages and correcting the guide.