Caravan Coffee Roasters

Overview

Caravan was founded in February 2010 on Exmouth Market by three New Zealanders — Laura Harper-Hinton, Chris Ammermann and chef Miles Kirby — who met working at Mondo Cucina in Wellington in the late 1990s. They put every penny into a 50-cover all-day restaurant with a coffee roaster in the basement; chef Margot Henderson (Harper-Hinton's cousin) became their first wholesale customer at her Rochelle Canteen, and the second venue — the converted Granary Square grain store at King's Cross, opened August 2012 — became the template for the modern London all-day-restaurant-plus-roastery format.

Known for

• Antipodean-led 'well-travelled' all-day dining and specialty coffee, alongside Allpress and Climpson & Sons in shaping London's third-wave coffee scene
• Lamb Works flagship roastery in Holloway, North London — an ~8,500–10,000 sq ft Victorian warehouse with cafe, coffee school and events space
• Roasts approximately 3,000 kg of coffee per week
• B Corp certified
• Eight London restaurants/cafes including Exmouth Market, King's Cross, Bankside, Bloomberg Arcade, Fitzrovia, Canary Wharf and Vardo (Chelsea), plus a Manchester opening in August 2024
• Cookbook: 'Caravan: Dining All Day' (Vintage Books)

Why it matters

Caravan was among the first London businesses to fuse all-day dining with an in-house specialty roastery, anchoring the Antipodean wave of London cafes that ran from roughly 2005 through the early 2010s. Their 2012 King's Cross opening, in a 'middle of nowhere' Victorian grain store at Granary Square, became the proof-of-concept for the entire neighbourhood's hospitality redevelopment.

Production

destoning

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head roaster

Sam Langdon

color sorting

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roaster machine

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filter equipment

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cupping frequency

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roastery location

Lamb Works, Holloway, North London (flagship)

espresso equipment

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annual volume tonnes

156

Café

11-13 Exmouth Market, London EC1R 4QD (original 2010 venue); Granary Building, 1 Granary Square, King's Cross, London N1C 4AA; plus Bankside, Bloomberg Arcade, Fitzrovia, Canary Wharf, Vardo (Chelsea) and Manchester

Recognitions

• B Corp certified

Sources

• https://caravanandco.com/pages/about
• https://dineoutmagazine.co.uk/story.php?s=2023-06-19-feature-join-the-caravan-of-love
• https://www.restaurantonline.co.uk/Article/2018/04/27/Caravan-London-restaurant-business-profile/
• https://group.canarywharf.com/press-release/caravan-brings-their-well-travelled-all-day-dining-speciality-coffee-and-brunch-to-canary-wharf-this-february-310122/
• https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/careers/2014/11/20/meet-miles-kirby/
• https://confidentials.com/manchester/caravan-comes-to-manchester
• https://unpacking.coffee/caravan-coffee-roasters/
• https://foodism.co.uk/features/long-reads/london-coffee-culture/