WATCH: From phone business to coffee giant – how Grind carved out a niche

As retail coffee prices rise and consumer spend declines, the UK’s coffee industry has never been more competitive. 

US tariffs on coffee-producing countries, hedge fund speculation on commodity prices and increases in business taxes have created a challenging environment. 

So how has one independent, South London producer managed to beat the odds and find its own niche in a busy market? 

The business may be turning over millions now, but the path to get here hasn’t been smooth sailing for founder and chief executive, David Abrahamovitch. 

Grind’s story began when Abrahamovitch inherited his father’s mobile phone business in a small building on Old Street roundabout, a site he’d later turn into a coffee shop. 

In a deep-dive documentary on the coffee disruptor, Abrahamovitch told City AM’s Rupert Hargreaves about the biggest challenge he remembers in his journey so far: “The day your entire high street business gets closed by the government and you go from however many millions to zero overnight, with a few hundred people to figure out what to do with.”

Since then the brand has gone from a single “hipster” location in Shoreditch, to being the official partner of British Airways, and signing deals with big names such as Gary Neville. 

“We want to just take the quality of everything up,” said the Grind chief, “taking that speciality coffee piece which we learned the hard way on the high street… and now translating that into all the different ways that people buy coffee. 

But success brings new challenges: “We’ve got these distinct businesses, so we have our high street business, we have our online business and we have our grocery business and B2B [business to business].

“So keep that whole ship moving in the same direction and keeping the values and the brand aligned between all those is hard.”