Once upon a coffee
Our story began when coffee buyer James Sweeting and coffee trader Simon Herring combined their expertise and began hand roasting coffee in a garden shed.
We’re easy-going coffee experts who take serious pride in sourcing, roasting and packing the best coffee for customers across the globe.
Our passion for coffee is matched by our endless curiosity to learn more about coffee consumers and the coffee market. We provide more than coffee to our partners, offering industry leading data, consumer insight and market expertise.
We’re proud to have the same family values and personal touch that we had when the business was founded 30 years ago. From independent coffee shops to high street brands, retail to wholesale, we have always been – and will always be – committed to going above and beyond and finding the perfect solution for your customers.
We’ve come a long way since our founders James Sweeting and Simon Herring began hand-roasting beans in a garden shed in 1994, and selling them to local golf clubs and we can’t wait to see what the next 30 years brings.
Richard is our go to coffee market expert at Lincoln & York, with over 20 years' experience in FMCG category management.
Covering the whole coffee market across out of home and in-home, Richard delves into the data to understand key coffee trends, and consumer behaviour. He transforms this into actionable insights to make sure our customers are armed with the coffee market knowledge to help their business grow.
Chris joined Lincoln & York as marketing manager and after falling in love with coffee he took on the role of coffee buyer. He now heads up the team responsible for buying around 8,000t of coffee a year along with creating bespoke blends and quality assessment.
As one of our registered in-house Q Graders, when he's not buying coffee, you'll usually find Chris engaging with customers, educating them on coffee or tasting and creating bespoke blends.
Dave has been at Lincoln & York for over 20 years - and today, in his role as Roasting Supervisor, he's responsible for a team of people who roast all of the coffee that comes through the business.
Dave and his team ensure that every batch of coffee we roast meets the required specification for our customers, whilst also working closely with the planning and supply chain teams to ensure coffee is available and roasted on time so our customers have exactly what they need - when they need it.
Thomas' early career as cocktail curator ignited his passion for flavour creation. Something he gets to do everyday in his current role as Trainee Coffee Buyer and Taster.
Thomas passed his Q Grade course after only 18 months working in coffee - an impressive achievement! His role covers everything from buying to bespoke blend creation. When he's not buying coffee you'll usually find him in our state of the art lab tasting coffee.
Mollie is a self proclaimed coffee lover, who prior to joining Lincoln & York worked as a Barista for two years at a well-known high street chain.
In a short time at L&Y, Mollie has passed her apprenticeship with distinction, scoring the highest mark in her class and won the Food Manufacture Future Talent Award for 2024. She is now working towards her Q Grade exams.
You'll usually find Mollie in the coffee lab tasting coffee with customers, helping them come up with bespoke blends and roasting samples.
With over two decades of experience, Tom’s role includes developing new roast profiles, planning green coffee intake for around 8,000 tonnes of coffee a year and tasting & quality assessing all arrivals and pre-shipment samples.
Tom is one of our in-house registered Q Graders and his passion for roasting means he truly understands how the roasting process affects the flavour profile of our customers blends.
Richard is our go to coffee market expert at Lincoln & York, with over 20 years' experience in FMCG category management.
Covering the whole coffee market across out of home and in-home, Richard delves into the data to understand key coffee trends, and consumer behaviour. He transforms this into actionable insights to make sure our customers are armed with the coffee market knowledge to help their business grow.
Chris joined Lincoln & York as marketing manager and after falling in love with coffee he took on the role of coffee buyer. He now heads up the team responsible for buying around 8,000t of coffee a year along with creating bespoke blends and quality assessment.
As one of our registered in-house Q Graders, when he's not buying coffee, you'll usually find Chris engaging with customers, educating them on coffee or tasting and creating bespoke blends.
Thomas' early career as cocktail curator ignited his passion for flavour creation. Something he gets to do everyday in his current role as Trainee Coffee Buyer and Taster.
Thomas passed his Q Grade course after only 18 months working in coffee - an impressive achievement! His role covers everything from buying to bespoke blend creation. When he's not buying coffee you'll usually find him in our state of the art lab tasting coffee.
With over two decades of experience, Tom’s role includes developing new roast profiles, planning green coffee intake for around 8,000 tonnes of coffee a year and tasting & quality assessing all arrivals and pre-shipment samples.
Tom is one of our in-house registered Q Graders and his passion for roasting means he truly understands how the roasting process affects the flavour profile of our customers blends.
Our story began when coffee buyer James Sweeting and coffee trader Simon Herring combined their expertise and began hand roasting coffee in a garden shed.
We moved into our new HQ in Brigg – located between Lincoln and York – and the company got a new name!
With our new 90kg drum roaster, the business quickly became the region’s premier supplier into local coffee shops, golf clubs and garden centres.
The distributor arm of the business was sold and we put all our focus into roasting great coffee.
The now 40-strong team moved into another new premises – Kahawa House – where we are based today.
To celebrate our 20th anniversary, we installed a 600kg roaster – the largest in the UK – and opened our state-of-the-art contingency roastery.
The business continued to go from strength to strength, winning first place in the Sunday Times International Track 200 awards, in recognition of our growing international and export business.
Two new coffee silos installed to double our capacity for green bean storage and allowing even more flexibility to create bespoke blends for our customers.
We were one of the first roasters in the UK to launch recyclable coffee packaging in LDPE4 film for 1kg bags, 500g bags and 60g filter sachets.
Our recyclable packaging wins gold in the Packaging Innovation awards and a Packaging Excellence at the Worldstar Global Packaging Awards.
In 2021, we invested £2m into a new 'world class' high speed retail packing line.
The old roastery site is converted to expand warehousing and office space – with 1300 additional pallet spaces and solar panels to provide all electricity for the site.
We started the transition from PE (polyethylene) recyclable film to PP (polypropylene).
We upgraded our coffee quality lab into an industry-leading customer experience and tasting space. Here, the coffee team quality check more than 150 cups a day and work on new blends for our customers.
