Dark Arts Coffee
United Kingdom 🇬🇧
Dark Arts Coffee began with a bluff. In 2014, Brad Morrison, a New Zealand barista living in Hackney, had had enough of the coffee he was serving and told his boss he could do better. The boss agreed to change supplier if Brad set up his own roastery. The money came from Colin Mitchell, met the year before at a motorcycle festival. Brad sums up the deal in his own way: "a barista with no roasting experience convinced someone with even less to give him money." The pair set up under a railway arch in Homerton, an area then so unfashionable that Brad's mother, looking for the address, first came across a mugging in front of the arch.
Rather than imitating sleek Scandinavian-style roasteries, Dark Arts embraces what its founders really love: the occult, choppers, heavy metal and 1970s horror films. The coffees are called Cult of Doom, Holy Mountain or, for the decaf, Life After Death. Beneath the skulls, Jamie Strachan, head of coffee and self-confessed metal fan, selects emerging origins, Indonesia, East Timor, Guerrero in Mexico, and roasts light. During the lockdowns, online sales jumped by more than 1,000%, and Sprudge ended up listing the house among its notable roasters.
