New York's Blank Street Coffee makes UK debut with London stores

Property consultancy Harper Dennis Hobbs is working to secure 25 Blank Street locations in the UK throughout 2022 | Photo credit: Harper Dennis Hobbs

New York specialty coffee brand Blank Street Coffee looks set on moving beyond its coffee cart roots, opening the first of two brick-and-mortar outlets in London, its first UK site.
 

Having announced plans to make London its ‘second-biggest city’ earlier this year, the company has opened a coffee shop in Fitzrovia and will open a second store in Shoreditch on 5 July.  

According a press release, property consultancy Harper Dennis Hobbs is working to secure 25 Blank Street locations in the UK throughout 2022, with firm targeting London locations of between 200 and 800 sq ft, indicating that the company will move away from its mobile outlet model in pursuit of a brick-and-mortar business. 

Founded in 2020, Blank Street currently operates 30 mobile cart and cafés in New York and plans to expand to 150 locations globally by the end of 2022. 

In February 2022 Blank Street Coffee hired Ignacio Llado as Managing Director to oversee its UK expansion. Llado was previously Managing Director at Singapore-based Flash Coffee. 

“We have ambitious plans to make London our second-biggest city behind New York, so we can’t wait to open our first shop. We plan to quickly follow this up with a number of ideal locations in key neighbourhoods across London,” he said. 

In October 2021, Blank Street secured $25m Series A funding, led by US investment firms General Catalyst and Tiger Global, to grow its business in New York. The investment followed $7m seed funding raised earlier that year.