There are several factors that have led to our decision to close the site, with a key one being a significant rent increase from our landlords. Choosing to move away from the site at this time opens our resources to invest in other branches of our business, particularly our valued wholesale customer base that continues to grow each year. We never say never to a new coffee bar experience either.
This change also coincides with a small turnover in our barista team. With a couple of old faces moving onto new careers and countries, our regular Spitalfields team will be moving to work solely at our Broadway Market cafe and thankfully no jobs will be lost through this closure.
To mark the end of the era, here’s some of the things we’ve learnt along the way.
Choosing the right coffee equipment for your needs and venue!
The year 2017 saw the launch of La Marzocco’s Mod Bar technology, a unique piece of kit that allowed you to brew espresso at bench height, with all the essential tech quietly tucked beneath the bar. This allowed the barista to chat and connect with their customer without hovering on tip toes to peek over a large espresso machine. Eye contact with ease, what a brilliant idea. We decided to showcase this innovative new espresso system for our Spitalfields Market bar.
And while the set up looked flash, in an outdoor setting it left our poor espressos delicately exposed to the elements. Particularly as we very quickly realised our bar was located in a perfect wind tunnel, unavoidably exaggerating even the slightest of breezes into a gail force situation. With no espresso machine to hide behind, our precision scales were victim to gusts, while the shots themselves needed two cupped barista hands to shield them from the wind. Pouring just one espresso would often be at least a 5 minute job. Our new customers were, understandably, unimpressed.
And that’s the customers who even knew we were serving coffee. From the outside, the Mod Bar looked nothing like a coffee machine and most potential new customers would walk past us, assuming it was some sort of trendy craft beer set up. After a few months of trying to make it work we decided to change tack and introduced the La Marzocco Strada, a beautiful sleek piece of kit that looked exactly like a customer might expect an espresso machine to look, and more importantly in this context, being sturdy enough to withstand the British weather and act as a metal shield for our baristas. We immediately saw our takings increase.
Being open to change
This leads us to a valuable lesson from our time in the market. Being open to change.
When we first opened, the Spitalfields development was billed as a high end foodie destination. And while much of the food reputation remains, it’s now much more geared to street food snacking, rather than a more restaurant style experience. The more grab and go offering, with traders such as Humble Crumble and Dumpling Shack scoring wide Instagram fame, led to the market becoming a real tourist hot spot for both Londoners and out-of-towners looking for a quick (and trending) bite to eat.
This change in the market’s demographics meant a pivot for our vision of the location. What was originally conceived as an Italian style espresso bar - think, morning cappuccinos and a peruse of the days newspaper at the bar - became a more takeaway affair, aside from the one customer that kept our dreams alive by routinely sipping an espresso from a ceramic cup and read the financial times. Most of our regular customers came seeking a quick coffee on the go or to take back to the desk at neighbouring offices. This meant our priority was to be as efficient as possible, offering easy speed of service wins like our Nitro Cold Brew, all while making sure every coffee we poured was consistently delicious.
When neighbours become good friends
Spitalfields is a community built on independent traders, all operating under one building. This means your neighbours very quickly become your friends, with word of mouth being the best way to build your trade. From day one, we offered a neighbourly discount to all our fellow traders in the market and this helped us get to know those working around us through the daily gossip and chats, as well as ensure we had an amount of money going through the till while our trade was still building.
However we’ve seen the makeup of the market change significantly in recent years. As part of the original development of Old Spitalfields Market we were the first to offer specialty coffee under its historic roof. However in the years since, we’ve seen multiple specialty coffee sites open in the market. While like-minded businesses can go to support your own trade, there can be a tipping point where there’s just too much choice in a very small area. While we’ve always valued our strong group of loyal regulars (thank you!) we have seen the tourist trade spread thin as more and more specialty options have opened, many of which had the option for a warm seat inside to sip a cappuccino, something we just couldn’t offer from our bar out in the elements.
Keep your baristas warm
And to the elements, one of our greatest challenges was working with the weather. Our first few months were spent enduring the British winter with a minimal heating set up. As soft indoor baristas, used to rocking up to work at our steamy Broadway Market cafe, we were little prepared for our new working conditions. The breaking point was the ‘Beast from the East’ storm where the steam wand literally froze over.
We invested in a functional heater for inside our little pod, as well as Uniqlo (IYKYK) thermals and puffer jackets for the whole team. We learnt to double sock and wouldn’t leave the house without at least one polo neck layer. Life was significantly warmer and all the better for it.
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And so it’s a warm farewell to our home in Spitalfields. Thank you to everyone that has come to buy a coffee and have a chat through the years. We have loved being part of the community and will be sad to leave the little pod that has helped bring our coffee to a whole new neighbourhood of East London.
We’re looking forward to the next steps for Climpsons and continuing to offer delicious ethically sourced specialty coffee from our Broadway Market cafe and online shop.
If you’re looking for our coffee in the Spitalfields area, we supply beans to the wonderful Ottolenghi in Artillery Lane as well as Alba Caffe located on both Commercial Street and in the Whitechapel Gallery.
