About River Coffee Roasters
Founder's Story
In a rural agricultural settlement in Central America, a bus eases off the gas. It stops on the side of a long jet-black tarmacked road, cradled by green and fertile mountainous terrain. The roadside is sparsely inhabited by single-story dwellings. A single chair on each tiled veranda and a crucifix hung proudly on each wall declares their occupancy. This is a community that doesn’t often receive visitors.
The bus is filled with a rapid, rhythmic exchange of Spanish. There’s some uncertainty over the location, hotly debated between the driver and back-seat passengers. Eventually, the driver’s words are spoken with enough full-bodied certainty to convince a backpack to be wrestled down the aisle and off the bus. It’s time to get to work.
With the view of there being no better way to learn than experience something, founder Will Harrigan spent a year living and working on coffee farms alongside coffee farmers, pickers and producers in Colombia to Guatemala and the six central American countries in between.
It was whilst working on a farm in Costa Rica that the idea of River Coffee was born.
After experiencing the hard labour and long hours involved in coffee production, Will made it his mission to source, roast and supply exceptional speciality grade coffee that was fully traceable, sourced through direct relationships and that recognised the coffee producing communities at origin.
No stranger to the coffee industry in the UK, having trained, worked and competed across the speciality coffee scene, in 2018 Will returned home to establish River Coffee Roasters.
Since 2018
We have grown organically since then, from initially roasting on a tabletop Ikawa 50g roaster to scaling up and moving into our HQ in the stunning Hampshire countryside where we have capacity to roast over 1000 kilos of coffee a day.
A Collaborative Brew™
True to Will’s early impressions of collaboration between the many hands involved in coffee production in producing countries, River Coffee Roasters needed a team.
Collaboration is one of our key values. We see our role as coffee roasters as part of an epic team effort. Produced by many hands across a global network, from pickers and producers, importers and exporters, roasters, baristas and home-brewers.
Wholesale With River Coffee
In addition to fuelling the nation with coffee delivered direct to door, we are proud to supply leading hospitality venues in Hampshire and across the South with high quality blends, single origins, ancillary products and equipment supply in addition to barista training and technical support.
Planet
We consider our environmental impact through the supply chain.
Nowhere is this impact more obvious that when spending time with people in coffee producing communities whose livelihoods depend upon climate, soil health and the earth’s wellbeing.
We are also reminded daily of our responsibility to protect the planet in our leafy corner of the South Downs.
Our logo is made up of the key foundations in the production of coffee: land, water, altitude and sunlight. It showcases our strong links to origin and recognises that coffee is an agricultural crop dependent on the wellbeing of our planet.
Direct Trade
We value our relationships with coffee producers as we would not be here without them, and we pay the price quality coffee deserves. We operate a direct trade model, buying only speciality graded coffee and paying above and beyond the Fairtrade baseline. Through the relationships we’ve developed in coffee producing countries, we can ensure the premiums we pay for coffee go directly to the producers who grew it. Collaborating with producers on upcoming coffee selections and regular origin visits to the countries and regions we buy from means we remain in touch with the communities at the heart of this industry.
Sustainable Packaging Solutions
As part of our commitment to sustainability, we are dedicated to finding ways that reduce our production of waste and the impact of our products. Since 2023 we have been packaging coffee in fully recyclable plastic coffee bags. These bags are made from LDPE4 mono plastic, suitable for domestic at-home recycling. By choosing this material, we’ve created a more circular packaging solution that reduces the need for virgin material production and makes environmentally responsible consumption of our products easy.
We’re proud to have operated a zero-waste solution for wholesale packaging too since 2019. Balancing the need to package our coffee for optimal freshness with the rates wholesale partners use coffee, our re-useable 2kg tub scheme (where coffee is delivered in tubs that are collected, cleaned and refilled on a weekly rotation) has saved on over 45,000 units of bag packaging.
People
The final key component in the production of coffee (alongside land, water, sunlight and altitude) is people.
And, we believe all businesses have a should have a positive impact on people and communities.
Through our Community programme, River Community, we strive to have a positive impact on our global coffee communities and our local community in Hampshire. We partner with charities that do amazing work, sponsor community organisations and back cause-related initiatives.