Carnival Coffee Roasters - Best Community Coffee Shop 2025 & 2026

LCF Awards Spotlight Q&A

1. Congratulations on your win! Can you tell us a little about your business and what makes it special?

Carnival Coffee Roasters is an independent, family-run speciality coffee roastery and coffee shop in Penge, South East London. 

We roast all our coffee ourselves in Penge, working with incredible producers and importers to source coffees that have a story, a sense of place and a positive impact at origin. Juan is a Q Grader and leads our roasting and coffee offerings.

Our story started many moons ago when Juan’s Grandfather won a little piece of coffee growing mountainside in a lucky game of poker.

Carnival has always been about more than coffee. We wanted to create somewhere that genuinely belongs to its neighbourhood – a place where people know one another, where conversations happen across benches, where someone can come in on their own and still feel part of something or have a treat 20 minutes out of their hectic day.

We are in the lucky position of being able to bring great coffee, people and music together under one roof.  That is probably what makes Carnival most special to us and the origin story of Carnival!

2. What award did you win at The London Coffee Festival Awards, and what does that recognition mean to you and your team?

We were super lucky to have won Best Community Coffee Shop for the second year in the row which it made it even more special.  Most importantly it meant loads to the wonderful community we are part of.

There are so many brilliant coffee shops in London, so to be recognised specifically for community meant an enormous amount to us and our team.

Penge is at the heart of Carnival. Our customers have watched our Carnival bloom, supported us through all the times, celebrated the good moments, learnt about coffee with us with us and become friends along the way. The award felt less like something Carnival had won and more like something our whole little corner of South East London had won together.

For an independent business, where you put so much of yourself into what you do every day, having somebody outside your four walls say, “we see what you’re creating”, is incredibly powerful.

3. What inspired you to enter The London Coffee Festival Awards?

Community has always been one of the things we care about most, but it is also one of the hardest things to measure.

You can measure kilos roasted, coffees sold or turnover, score of a new coffee but how do you measure someone making a new friend at an event, a customer feeling that the coffee shop is part of their daily rhythm, or people learning about the producer behind the coffee they’re drinking? and making new coffee friends at our free tastings or Barista classes.

The Community Coffee Shop Award felt like an opportunity to stop and recognise all of those small things that happen around Carnival every day.

4. What do you think helped you stand out and secure the win?

The lovely South East London Community that got behind the award again this year and voted for Carnival.

We create reasons for people to come together, whether that’s our Friday Caffeine & Vinyl sessions, cuppings, coffee classes and events, or simply creating a warm space where people feel welcome.

We’re also passionate about connecting the two communities at either end of a cup of coffee. We want our customers in Penge to know about the people and places their coffee comes from, and for the producers we work with to be visible and celebrated.

And because we’re independent and owner-operated, it’s very personal. We’re there. Our team is there. Our children have grown up around Carnival. Our customers know us and we know them. I think people can feel that.

5. Tell us about the journey behind your business. What has been your proudest achievement so far?

Carnival has grown very organically. We began as a speciality coffee roastery in 2019 and eventually opened our Penge coffee shop in 2023, bringing the roastery, our coffee and our community much closer together.

There have been plenty of highs and lows along the way – as I think there are for every independent hospitality business! – but we’ve kept coming back to the same idea: great coffee, great people and meaningful coffee relationships.

Our proudest achievement isn’t really one particular sales figure or milestone. It’s seeing Carnival become part of people’s lives.

It’s someone bringing their new baby in for the first time, customers becoming friends, watching people become fascinated by coffee through a cupping, seeing the Carnival team develop, and being able to introduce our customers to the extraordinary producers behind the coffees we roast.

Winning Best Community Coffee Shop felt like recognition of all those tiny moments added together.

6. What impact has winning had on your business, team or community since the awards were announced?

It’s been huge, we are lucky enough to have visitors from all over London and the UK who have heard about Carnival through the award.

Our customers and the Carnival team were genuinely delighted, and there was a lovely sense locally that Penge had won something too. For our team, it reinforced that all the little things matter – remembering someone’s order, welcoming somebody by name, taking time to talk about a coffee or creating an event that brings people through the door.

7. How important is it to receive recognition from the coffee community?

It means a huge amount.

Speciality coffee is full of incredibly knowledgeable, creative and passionate people, and we have learned so much from being part of that community.

Coffee can sometimes become very focused on equipment, scores, processing and technical excellence – all of which matter enormously – but ultimately coffee is about people. Producers, roasters, baristas and the person drinking the cup.

8. If someone was visiting your coffee shop for the first time, what’s the one thing they absolutely shouldn’t miss?

Come and drink whatever coffee we’re most excited about that week and ask us to tell you its story.

We roast in Penge and our coffees change throughout the year, so there is nearly always something new to discover.

Join us for a free coffee tasting on Tuesday morning. And if you can, come on a Friday for Caffeine & Vinyl. Great coffee, records playing and people coming together is probably Carnival distilled into one morning.

9. What’s next? Are there any exciting plans, projects or ambitions on the horizon?

We want to keep growing Carnival without losing the thing that made it special in the first place.

That means continuing to find extraordinary coffees and deepen our relationships at origin, while creating more opportunities for people to experience and understand speciality coffee through cuppings, classes, events and collaborations.

We’re also increasingly sharing what we’ve learned with other independent hospitality businesses, helping new coffee shops with everything from coffee and training to workflows, barista recruitment and opening their doors.

Our ambition is for Carnival to grow, but still feel like Carnival: independent, curious, colourful, generous and rooted in community.

10. What advice would you give to businesses thinking about entering The London Coffee Festival Awards in the future?

Just do it!

Small independent businesses are often so busy doing the work that we rarely stop to reflect, simply writing the application can be a wonderful reminder of why you started in the first place.

We have been so lucky to have benefited from all the wonderful PR surrounding the awards.  It has been a real morale booster for the team and our lovely Community and each year has been a big excuse for a celebration party.

Instagram: @carnivalcoffeeroasters