Black Sheep Coffee

Over the past decade, Black Sheep Coffee has become one of the most talked-about names in UK coffee, growing to more than 130 locations across the United Kingdom and the Middle East and taking home back-to-back wins for Best Multiple Operator at the London Coffee Festival. Co-founded by Eirik Holth and Gabriel Shohet, the brand built that dominance on a coffee category the specialty industry had largely ignored, and now the founders are bringing the same model to the United States.

The American coffee market is one of the most competitive retail sectors in the country, with tens of billions of dollars in annual consumer spending and a landscape shaped for decades by a handful of dominant chains. Breaking into that market with something genuinely new is rare, and the product Holth and Shohet are introducing has no direct equivalent among American competitors.

Black Sheep Coffee operates as the world's first specialty-grade 100% Robusta coffee company. For decades, the specialty coffee industry has centred on Arabica beans, treating Robusta as a lower-grade commodity ingredient used mainly to reduce costs in mass-market blends. Holth and Shohet took the opposite approach, travelling to origin farms and building direct relationships with growers to develop a specialty-grade Robusta that meets quality standards the industry had never applied to the bean. The resulting coffee contains more caffeine than Arabica, more protein and lower acidity, giving it a genuinely distinct profile rather than serving as a stripped-down alternative.

That UK success is now translating into momentum in the US. Black Sheep Coffee has locations across the Dallas-Fort Worth area, including Dallas, Plano and Grapevine, alongside sites in Florida, where Miami serves as the company's US headquarters. A 20-store franchise development agreement across the Dallas-Fort Worth area was signed in early 2026, accelerating one of the more ambitious specialty coffee expansion plans currently under way in the US market. Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina have been identified as the next target states.

The brand is as visually distinctive as the product itself. Every location features original street art painted directly on the walls by commissioned artists, with each shop displaying a unique work created specifically for that space. Reclaimed timber is also used throughout the furniture, reflecting a design language that traces back to the first shop Holth and Shohet built by hand from salvaged construction materials more than a decade ago. The aesthetic developed out of necessity rather than design and remained because it became the most authentic expression of what the brand stands for.

Black Sheep Coffee

Ceremonial-grade matcha sourced directly from Japan now accounts for 18% of total company sales, alongside Norwegian waffles that complement a menu built on the same sourcing discipline as its coffee programme. Black Sheep Coffee has raised no institutional capital, and Holth and Shohet retain full ownership of the company.

Growth has been governed by an operational health framework that expands the network only when existing locations confirm the system is ready, a discipline that helped establish the brand's UK success. With that same strategy now under way in the US, Holth and Shohet have set a target of doubling their global footprint within the next 18 months, with the American market central to that ambition.