Brighton has so much to offer… the beautiful seaside, amazing quirky shops, lively bars and of course, great coffee shops! Founders Alice and Ben scour the UK for the best coffee and best cafes and recently (May, 2023) spent the day in Brighton. We visited a few brilliant coffee shops and wanted to share our favourite spots for high quality, sustainable and organic coffee. These cafes also happen to have brilliant food and especially brunch, so definitely check them out when you are next down in the area!

Here’s our round up of the best spots we found.

Wolfox coffee roasters & cafe

Wolfox is led by Anderson, Head of Coffee, and was founded by Fabio Lauro in 2017. Their cafes and roastery are places of elegance and beauty. Fabio is obsessed with details and this shines through in his well designed spaces. Their elegant design is combined with pioneering great organic coffee, to make their cafes truly remarkable. They now have 4 cafes across Brighton as well as one in Leeds and another in Haywards Heath. If you are heading to Madrid anytime soon, you will be able to grab a specialty coffee there too! We visited in May 2023 on a glorious summers day and enjoyed a cold brew with coffee from Kabira, Mustefa Abakeno - Ethiopia which was nothing short of delicious. This organic coffee was smooth, clean, and fruity with tasting notes of Blackberry, Damson Plum and Bergamot. Head over to our YouTube page to check out Ben and Alice in Wolfox, Brighton.

Where to find Wolfox in Brighton?

1. 5-6 Circus Parade, New England Rd, Brighton

2. Wolfox Roastery: 27 Preston Street, Brighton, BN1 2HP

3. 31a Western Road, Hove

4. Wolfox Prestonville: 5-6 Circus Parade, Brighton

5. 109 Western Rd, Hove, Brighton and Hove, Hove BN3 1FA

6. Wolfox Chapters: 31-32 New Rd, Brighton and Hove, BN1 1UG

Wolfox will soon be opening for lates with some great food and wine in the evenings. Watch this space!

Small batch coffee

Where to find Small Batch coffee roasters in Brighton?

• 70 Goldstone Villas, Hove, BN3 3RU

• Wellington House, Portslade, BN41 1DU

Small Batch Coffee was founded in 2006 with the first coffee shop in Goldstone Villas in Hove. Today, they operate two cafés, a coffee cart and they also supply plenty more independent coffee shops all over the UK. Their award-winning roastery is located in Portslade, this space is the heart of the brand and where their ethically and sustainably sourced .0 coffee is roasted in small batches. In 2022, Small Batch were proud to be awarded Coffee Roaster of the Year in LuxLIFE's Food & Drink Awards and Best Specialty Coffee Roaster - Runner-Up in Allegra’s European Coffee Awards.

Small Batch coffee focus on direct trade relationships and their ethos centres around “FARM TO CUP”. The team work with farmers across four continents and 20 countries and regularly travel to meet their producers, and aim to work with the same farms year after year to create long standing and mutually beneficial relationship.

Trading post coffee

Where are Trading Post Coffee roasters and cafes in Brighton?

• Trading Post Coffee Roasters, 40 Kensington Gardens, Brighton, BN1 4AL

• Ship Street Trading Post, 36 Ship St, Brighton, BN1 1AB

• Trading Post roastery 13-14 Sydney St, Brighton, BN1 4EN

• Brighton Station Trading Post Coffee, 109 Stroudley Road, Brighton, BN1 4DJ

• Lewes, Trading Post Coffee 18 Cliffe High St, Lewes, BN7 2AH

• Chichester Trading Post Coffee, 69 South St, Chichester, PO19 1EE

We stopped by Trading Post in Ship Street for brunch where we had avocado on toast with feta, chilli flakes, tomatoes and poached eggs on sourdough - which was delicious! The place was packed and had a great atmosphere; we only had to wait 20 minutes for our food which was reasonable considering it was a busy sunny day in Brighton.

The coffee we had was a Brazil and ‘Latin America’ blend which was delicious as a Long Black. Smooth and balanced with hints of chocolate and hazelnut. We would liked to have known which ‘Latin American’ country it was though.

We have tried Trading Post Coffee previously, having met them at London Coffee Festival (read all about it here!) and really love the ethical ethos behind this company. They also source direct, and many of their coffees are certified organic. They are Rainforest Alliance members too!

If you buy their coffee online, all deliveries are also carbon neutral via bicycles.

Pelicano coffee

Where are Pelicano Coffee roasters and cafes in Brighton?

• 28 Sydney Street, Brighton, Brighton and Hove, Brighton BN1 4EP

• 28 Queens Road, Brighton BN1 3XA

• Pelicano, The Level, St Peters Place, Brighton BN1 4SB

Pelicano now share a roastery space with Wolfox coffee, but they also have a few cafes of their own. We featured Pelicano in our RiSE coffee box back in May, 2022.

Pelicano Coffee Co. is one of Brighton's most influential and important roasteries in what has now become a thriving coffee community. One of the foundations of the scene, Pelicano Coffee Co. was one of the first specialty coffee shops in the city and continues to lead the way in traceable, transparent, world beating specialty coffee.

The coffee we featured in The RiSE coffee box was Smokey Bird, which is Pelicano Coffee Co.'s house blend. It is made up of three components, a Colombia Gran Galope from the Argelia community in Cauca, a Guatemala Womens Producers Huehuetenango and an Ethiopia from the Tega & Tula farm in Kaffa. It is a really versatile blend which is great for espresso or slow brewing.

Pharmacie coffee roasters

Pharmacie coffee are a long time Brighton favourite of RiSE coffee box, having featured back in 2022! You can read more about them on our Partner page here.

Where is Pharmacie Coffee roasters and cafes in Brighton?

• 11 Cliffe Industrial Estate, Lewes BN8 6JL, United Kingdom

Pharmacie coffee run their roastery on the outskirts of the Brighton area in Lewes. They roast high quality coffee for cafes and restaurants, cinemas, offices, street vendors, pubs across West Sussex and beyond! They are a brilliant bunch and exceptional roasters in the area. Some of the cafes they work with that you should definitely pop in to are:

LOST IN THE LANES, Brighton: 10 Nile Street, Brighton, BN1 1HW

STOOGE COFFEE, Hastings: 4 Trinity St, Hastings TN34 1HG

GROUND LEWES: 18 Lansdown Pl, Lewes BN7 2JT

Horsham coffee roasters

Where are Horsham Coffee roasters and cafes in Brighton?

• Bond Street Cafe, 15 Bond St, Brighton, Brighton and Hove, Brighton BN1 1RD

• Horsham Roastery, Unit 5, 1a William Way, Burgess Hill, RH159AG

Bond St Coffee was opened in September 2014 as a joint venture between Horsham coffee roasters and their good friend Chris Campbell. It had been a long-held dream to have a coffee shop in which to showcase their fantastic single origin coffees and the best possible specialty coffee beans Brighton has to offer. Bond St Coffee is in the North Laine of Brighton (Bond St, obviously) and is a lively cafe with a great vibe. They only serve single origins, no blends.

Bond St Coffee always features highly in Brighton’s best coffee awards, and has been featured in Vogue Magazine’s insider guide to Brighton and in the Telegraph’s 30 best and 'buzziest' coffee shops. 

Red Roaster coffee

Where are red Roaster Coffee roasters and cafes in Brighton?

• 1d St James Street, Brighton, BN21RE

• 29 New Road, Brighton, BN11UG

• 183 Kings Road Arches, Brighton. BN11NB.

• 1d St James’s Street in Kemptown, Brighton

Regretfully, during a latest visit to Brighton we did not have time to make it into one of the four cafes run by the team at Red Roaster Coffee. The RiSE coffee box team had cupping and tasting sessions with Wolfox, Small Batch and Trading Post. However, Red Roaster is on our list to visit next. Incredibly Red Roaster is rated in the top 20 sustainable business in the UK!! Their roastery is the oldest certified organic roaster and all the food at the cafes is local and organic. They are members of the SRA (Sustainable restaurant Association) where they hold the highest award for their work in sustainability. Some of their initiatives focus around how farmers are looked after, general trade practices within the community as well as their overall environmental impact particularly around waste and energy.

If you are visiting Brighton and looking for a cafe and a coffee in Brighton to visit, this should be high up on the hit list!

Milkshed coffee roasters

Where is The Milkshed Coffee based in Brighton?

• 9 Prince's St, Brighton, Brighton and Hove, Brighton BN2 1RD

Now in the heart of the Bright coffee scene, The Milk Shed was once a dairy serving Brighton’s Royal Pavilion way back in the 1800’s. Fast forward a couple of hundred years and King George’s old dairy is now a centre of coffee roasting excellence.

Not a cafe we visited on this occasion, but one we are looking forward to pop into on our next visit.

skylark coffee

Where is Skylark Coffee based in Brighton?

• Skylark Coffee, Unit 1, Fairway Business Centre, Westergate Road, BN2 4JZ

We couldn’t write a blog about Brighton and not include the Skylark roastery! They consider themselves to be the only 100 percent non-profit, 100 percent transparent specialty coffee brand in the world.

Micah Sherer is the head roaster and buyer. He brings experience opening successful coffee businesses and managing teams in multiple countries; working within the supply chain to find better ways of supporting coffee producers in both Africa and South America; researching the power dynamics of coffee supply chains; and competing as an elite barista.

They pay 2x the Fair Trade rate and £1 per kilo goes towards conservation and empowerment efforts at home and in coffee-producing communities.

Skylark support four charities including:

- Knepp Wildland Foundation is a key environmental charity in the Southeast leading the way on rewilding, conservation and climate change.
- The Stumping Project, operated by Falcon and the NGO Technoserve, is an African project helping Ethiopian coffee farmers regenerate their coffee trees for sustainable harvests for years to come.
- Pro Baristas is a charity project focussed on unemployment in Sussex, especially among young people, while training them for coffee jobs.
- In Her Hands is a woodworking project empowering women by teaching the fundamentals of building. 

Thanks for reading our round up of brighton coffee roasters, feel free to add more suggestions in the comments!

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Also take a look at:

▻ Top 10 coffee roasters in Scotland

▻ Top 15 coffee roasters in Manchester

▻ Top 10 coffee roasters in Wales

▻ Top 5 coffee shops in Kent

▻ The rise of multi roaster subscriptions