If you have spent any time following the specialty coffee scene in the North East, the name Ouseburn Coffee Co. has likely come up. Founded in 2012 by four friends — Al, Simon, Pete and James — it is widely described as Newcastle's original specialty roaster, and the North East's original specialty roaster to boot. The whole operation is built on ethically sourced beans, traceable back to the farm or smallholder community, and the business is currently on its way to B Corp certification.
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For most people, the easiest place to catch them is at Harvest Canteen, their flagship coffee shop at 91 St George's Terrace in Jesmond, which opened in June 2014 and runs daily from 8am to 4pm. There you can get coffee, food and bags of beans to take home. If you are in the city centre, they also have a concession in the Fenwick Foodhall on Northumberland Street, open Monday to Saturday from 9am to 6pm and Sunday from 10.30am to 5pm. And for the weekend market crowd, their coffee cart at Tynemouth Station has been serving customers on Saturdays and Sundays from 8.30am to 4pm for almost fifteen years now.
The roastery itself sits on Albion Row in Ouseburn, and while it has been appointment-only until now, the newly refurbished space is due to reopen to the public from August 2026, on Saturday mornings from 9am to 1pm. It is worth remembering where this all started: the original roastery opened in 2012 in a converted garage on Foundry Lane, turning out around 100kg of coffee a day. James still works as the resident barista and barista trainer, and Al handles the home deliveries that reach as far as Durham, Morpeth and Carlisle.
What is worth knowing about the coffee itself is the range. They roast specialty single-origins alongside decaf, and their online shop carries the lot: Maliba from Uganda, Los Noranjos Anaerobic Geisha from El Salvador, Abebe Hailu from Ethiopia, Nyabiraba Hill Lot 40 from Burundi, Las Gaviotas Co-op from Colombia, Adumu from Kenya, Ibanda from Uganda, and a Sugarcane Decaf also from Colombia. For something more consistent, Foundry No. 1 and Coffee Johnny are their signature blends. Prices run from £12 to £58 a bag, with free postage and packaging.
Behind the scenes, the business has not always taken the easy path. The team famously went fourteen months without paying themselves and has turned down short-term profitable offers that they felt would be harmful in the long run. That kind of stubbornness is a good part of why they are still around after more than a decade, and why they are still talking about the North East's original specialty roaster rather than just another coffee shop. Whether you want a quick flat white in Jesmond, a bag of single-origin to brew at home, or a Saturday morning visit to the roastery once it reopens, Ouseburn Coffee Co. has quietly become a fixture of the city's coffee map.
