Where to Get Great Coffee in York.
We roast coffee in York, which means we also drink a lot of it around the city. These are the places we'd send a friend, plus a straight answer on who to talk to if you're buying wholesale.
York Has a Proper Coffee Scene Now
Not long ago it was chains and one or two outliers. That's changed.
York gets a lot of visitors, and a lot of them ask us the same question: where should I go for a good coffee? The honest answer is that the city is spoilt for choice now. A handful of independent shops take their coffee seriously, buy from good roasters, and train their people properly.
This isn't an exhaustive list. It's the short list of places we keep going back to, in no particular order, with one obvious exception that we've flagged so you can take it with a pinch of salt.
Six Places Worth the Walk
Or the drive, in one case.
Small, precise, and consistently one of the best cups in the city. The kind of place where the barista tastes the espresso before it goes out. If you only try one, try this one.
Serious about specialty in the proper sense: rotating single origins, well-dialled espresso and a filter menu worth reading. A good stop if you like to ask where a coffee came from.
kWh Coffee at Askham Bar
That's usOur own bar, run from a converted horsebox with First Bus at the park and ride. If you’re driving into York from Leeds or the A64, it’s the first proper coffee you’ll pass, and rated 5.0 on Google by the people who stop. Everything is roasted electric a few miles away.
Calm, Scandi-leaning and lovely to sit in for a while. The coffee is carefully made and the baking is as good a reason to visit as the espresso.
A bakery first, but the coffee is treated with the same care as the pastry. Go early, queue happily, and get something with laminated dough alongside your flat white.
A neighbourhood favourite on Bishy Road with a proper local feel. Reliable espresso, friendly service, and one of the nicer places to spend a Saturday morning outside the walls.
Buying Wholesale in York?
A straight answer from a roaster who obviously has a horse in this race.
If you run a café, a kitchen or a workplace and you're choosing a roaster, York has a few to pick from. We'd obviously like you to choose us, so here's what that actually looks like.
Wholesale from kWh
What we roast. Three coffees to start with, all roasted to order in York. A washed Colombian from Majestic Coffee in Huila, roasted medium-dark for espresso, with panela, caramel and a bright, sweet acidity. A medium-roast Brazilian from Eagle Monte Carmelo in the Cerrado Mineiro, smooth and dependable, sourced 100% from women farmers through the Café Delas programme, and the one most workplaces settle on. And a Colombian sugarcane decaf from Huila and Tolima that doesn't taste like a compromise. All of it is roasted on our all-electric Bellwether, traceable to the farm, and we'll give you the emissions data alongside the invoice.
How we work. Trade pricing by the kilo, 250g and 100g. Equipment help, barista training and roast profiles tuned to your machine. Deliveries by EV around York, and quantities that flex with your week rather than a fixed contract.
Other roasters in York
Harmony. If you want an alternative to kWh, start here. Harmony has been roasting in York for longer than we have, they're relationship-driven in the way a good local roaster should be, and when we're not drinking kWh, we're drinking Harmony.
And the rest. Roost, Coffee Emporium and Divine are the other longer-standing roasters in the city, and all worth knowing about if you're shopping around.
Why Choose kWh
The three things we'd put on the table.
Roasted electric, in York
Every batch goes through our Bellwether, the world’s first ventless, all-electric roaster. Under 0.1 kg CO₂ per roast cycle, which is a number you can actually put in a Scope 3 report.
Traceable to the farm
We buy direct and through small importers who work with producers on the ground. Ask us who grew your coffee and what they were paid, and we can tell you.
Built around your venue
Roast profiles, equipment help, training and delivery by EV for local orders. Small enough to flex, serious enough to get the quality right every week.
Come and taste it first
Stop by the bar at Askham Bar, or get in touch and we'll send samples and talk through what your venue needs. No contracts, no hard sell.