The ECS+COHO Interview Series: James Hennebry, Co-founder, Rosslyn Coffee

In partnership with the ECS+COHO Expo 2025, 24-26 November at the JW Marriott in Berlin, World Coffee Portal presents an exclusive series of interviews with influential voices in Europe’s coffee and hospitality industries

Founded in 2018 by James Hennebry and Mat Russell, Rosslyn Coffee is one of London’s standout coffee venues and today operates six stores across the heart of the UK capital’s bustling Square Mile district. 

Built for serving high volumes of specialty coffee, multi-award-winning Rosslyn is renowned for its small-format boutique outlets, razor-sharp attention to detail and distinctive pink takeaway cups. The coffee shop group is also a strong advocate of the London Living Wage, which starts at £13.85 ($18.33) per hour for all staff.  

Sustainability is another key priority for Hennebry and Russell. Rosslyn sources its coffee from B-Corp-certified Origin Coffee, which delivers every seasonal batch in reusable tins, saving over 32,000 coffee bags from landfill every year.

The business also saves more than 80,000 plastic milk bottles from landfill every year by utilising an automated milk system from Somerset-based The Estate Dairy, which delivers milk in 20-litre reusable buckets. Meanwhile, all takeaway hot coffees and iced beverages are served in fully compostable cups.

Here, Hennebry speaks to World Coffee Portal about the importance of running a values-based business, the joy of London’s flourishing specialty coffee scene – and why Rosslyn has remained fiercely independent.

What has been your biggest learning as a coffee business leader? 

It’s not about peacocking, it’s about consistently nailing the basics, with speed and accuracy. At Rosslyn, we also centre our business on the belief that success flourishes when shared. When paid forward, it gains momentum and, ultimately, becomes self-perpetuating.  

A simple example of this would be ensuring that we do our best to take care of our team, such as partnering closely with The Living Wage Foundation to help improve standards across our industry. This, in turn, allows our team to take good care of our guests who, in turn, ensure that we remain commercially successful.

This commercial success allows us to take even better care of our team, and so the cycle continues. 

What advice would you give your younger self when starting out in this industry?  

Ensure that you take the time to be present and enjoy what a special industry we are part of. I really enjoy travelling to various industry events across the world, as it offers an opportunity to engage with like-minded people across our global community. This is not work for me in the slightest; it is very much a privilege.

Rosslyn seeks to contribute to the London coffee scene and help to establish it as the global leader for high-volume specialty coffee. What a thing to wake up and get to contribute to every day! 

How do you stay entrepreneurial in an increasingly competitive and corporate environment?  

Rosslyn is a values-based business, and we ensure that we build our team with people who share these values. We don’t really worry ourselves too much about what’s happening externally around us; we just concentrate on what we do and getting better every day.

To paraphrase a certain band: We are not in the coffee industry, we are in the Rosslyn industry! We just do us and hope that’s good enough for everyone connected to us. 

What are the biggest challenges when scaling a premium coffee brand?  

Maintaining standards. When Mat Russell, my business partner, and I launched Rosslyn eight years ago, we worked on the bar every hour of every day. We personally connected with everything and everyone coming through the doors. With six – soon to be nine – sites and growing, this becomes more challenging.  

It also represents a great opportunity. We have built an exceptional team, attracting the very best of the best across our industry. Rosslyn is undoubtedly better today than it ever has been. And next week we’ll be better again. We are a very young company in the very early stages of our growth. Our team, service, coffee, structure and systems will all improve consistently.

It may be unsurprising to hear that one of our core values is Kaizen (a Japanese term meaning ‘change for the better’). 

Amid rising M&A activity in the coffee & hospitality space, what are the benefits of remaining independent?  

Mat and I launched this business from very humble beginnings, which took a great toll on both of us, both physically and mentally. We managed to pull through and, in doing so, our community has rallied around us. Today, Rosslyn remains fully independent, growing organically without any outside investment. It’s something that allows us to control every move of the business and maintain what made our guests come to us in the first place. Outside investment certainly offers many positives, but it’s just not for us right now.