Socially-focused coffee brand perks up for £1.2m investment round

Redemption Roasters, the UK’s largest purpose-led speciality coffee company, is set to treble revenues over the next three years as it embarks on a new investment round to help drive expansion in London and across the UK. The company is about to open its 11th retail premises in London and it also supplies its premium brand coffee to more than 200 wholesale customers, including KPMG, Meta and Amazon.

Launched in 2017, Redemption Roasters has recorded a 78% rise in monthly sales growth since 2019 and is currently on target to generate £8.1m in sales in the last 12 months with annual revenues forecast to exceed £25m by 2026.

With the UK branded coffee shop market valued at nearly £5bn per year and research showing London’s market for independent coffee retailers has capacity for major growth compared to other international cities, Redemption Roasters is planning to open a further 17 shops in the capital and other parts of the UK by 2026. The company is also developing a new app to boost B2C revenues by an estimated 15% and is focused on further expanding its wholesale customer base.

Redemption Roasters’ business is built around a strong social commitment. The company’s partnership with the UK Ministry of Justice provides retraining programmes aimed at reducing reoffending rates amongst prison leavers. 20% of Redemption Roasters’ current retail staff are either prison leavers or individuals deemed to be at risk of offending.

The company also operates a roastery inside HMP The Mount where resident ‘trainees’ benefit from spending extended periods out of their cells working in a positive environment alongside Redemption Roasters’ team. The company also provides coffee training inside and outside of prison with direct pathways to long-term employment. Through 14 partnerships with UK prisons to date, over 1500 individuals have taken part in these programmes, with participant reoffending rates sitting well below half the national average.

As well as paying an average of 120% more than the Fairtrade price to their bean suppliers, Redemption Roasters is also committed to social initiatives including supporting female farmers in Brazil and helping former civil war combatants in Colombia to retrain as coffee producers. It has also funded a new cupping lab to help an indigenous tribe in Burundi enhance the quality of its coffee.

The company was founded by Max Dubiel and Ted Rosner, who met while attending St Andrews University. Prior to launching Redemption Roasters, Max worked as a strategy consultant with large consumer brands and was also a founder of Black Sheep Coffee, the UK’s fastest growing
independent coffee chain. Ted, who qualified as a solicitor, worked with Wall Street firm Debevoise & Plimpton as a corporate specialist handling M&A deals.

The company’s executive team includes chairman Jonathan Heilbron, an experienced and successful brand innovator who was former CEO at shirtmaker Thomas Pink and is now a partner at premium consumer fund Redrice Ventures.

To help drive its ambitious growth strategy and support further development of its social aims, Redemption Roasters has now launched a £1.2m investment round, which includes a crowdfunding campaign on Crowdcube. Further details can be found here

The majority of the proceeds of the investment round will go towards financing the opening of new outlets.

Commenting on the investment round, Redemption Roasters founder Max Dubiel said: “As a purpose-driven business that has achieved phenomenal growth, we are very excited about this next chapter in our journey. This current investment round includes a crowdfund, enabling those who share our ethos to join us on our journey.

“The proceeds will drive further growth of our brand and help us achieve even greater profitability through scale. This will also enable the business to do more to help prison leavers and further deliver on our wider social ambitions to support coffee producers throughout the world.”