James Hoffmann

I co-founded Square Mile Coffee Roasters in 2008.

The company was created to not only source and roast coffees that would get people excited and interested in coffee, but it was also created to help foster a culture and community of coffee in London.

www.squaremilecoffee.com

I wrote The World Atlas of Coffee as a guide to the world of modern coffee. Published in 2014, by Octopus Publishing. The book is now it its third edition, having sold nearly 500,000 copies worldwide and there are an increasing number of translations available including Japanese, Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Korean, Thai and German, Spanish and more.

https://www.theworldatlasofcoffee.com

We created Tens, Hundreds and Thousands to build the products that we want to have but cannot find anywhere. Whether they are coffee-related, food, spirits and everything in between, we create the kind of things that we want to own and collect.

Everything we produce, we do so in multiples of tens, hundreds or thousands, depending on the item’s complexity, purpose and scale. Once an item sells out, we won't produce it again, making each edition unique and collectable.

We team up and collaborate with talented local and international artists, designers and manufacturers to make every project and product a reality.

We have online stores in the UK, Europe and the US.

Tens Hundreds Thousands

Cherry Bones is a print-only magazine loosely adjacent to coffee. We publish art, research, journalism and whimsy that says something genuinely interesting about the sheer global reach of coffee and its cousins — very few food items touch so many people so profoundly.

I am a co-founder and the publisher of this magazine.

Over the last decade I’ve worked hard to create useful videos and content on YouTube, in an effort to reach a wider audience than my blog previously did.

Most of my creative efforts are currently focused on this platform.

https://www.youtube.com/@jameshoffmann/

Prufrock Coffee was founded by Gwilym Davies, Jeremy Challender and Klaus Kunke.

Over the years the founders were pulled in different directions, with Gwilym in the Czech Republic, Klaus spending more time on the Isle of Wight and Jeremy planning to return to Australia.

In 2017 this meant there was an opportunity for Square Mile Coffee Roasters to get involved.

Prufrock has a global reputation for coffee quality, innovation and experience.

https://www.prufrockcoffee.com/

I collaborated with Nuova Simonelli/Victoria Arduino on an espresso machine, released in 2015.

The goal was to build a machine specifically for the growing speciality coffee community worldwide. The machine helped with the substantial growth the Victoria Arduino brand has seen in recent years, with an ARR in 2016 that is over 10x that of 2011.

The machine was the first in the world to make gravimetric technology widely available.

I was part of a small team of consultants who worked with Nuova Simonelli/Victoria Arduino to help create a new grinder for the speciality coffee market. The grinder has been widely praised as producing excellent coffee, while reduce waste and variance in the coffee bar.

I self-published “The Best of Jimseven” in 2017. The book is a beautiful hardback, compiling the best of my writing online covering a period of time that saw huge change in the industry.

It is also available as an e-book.

You can buy it here.

VA Machinery, now Nuova Distribution UK, was founded in 2017 to bring Victoria Arduino espresso machines and grinders to the UK market. They are now the UK office for the Simonelli Group.

Based near Camden, they have a dedicated showroom and training space to offer roasters, baristas, and engineers the opportunity to learn more about technologies and products

I was a founder and remain on the company's board of directors.

https://nuovadistribution.co.uk/

Located in Prufrock Coffee on the iconic Leather Lane in central London, the Prufrock Barista Training Centre offers a range of professional and home enthusiast courses and workshops. Led by SCA-accredited trainers with over 15 years of industry experience, each course is designed to help you refine your coffee skills and deepen your coffee knowledge in an inspiring, world-renowned setting.

https://www.prufrocktraining.com/

Carvetii Coffee are a quality focused roasting company, based in the heart of the Lake District. I was involved with the company for a number of years, but am now longer part of the business. They continue to roast superb coffee.

They might have the most beautiful location of any roasting company in the UK.

https://www.carvetiicoffee.co.uk/

I’m an advisor to Bellwether, who are building a new generation of smarter, electronic coffee roasters. I believe that their smokeless roaster has the potential to disrupt traditionally centralised roasting, and help the industry evolve past its reliance on fossil fuels.

They are based in Berkeley, CA.

https://www.bellwethercoffee.com/

Over the years I have competed in a number of coffee competitions:

World Championships:

World Barista Champion 2007

5th place World Barista Championships 2006

5th place World Latte Art Championships 2006

5th place World Coffee Tasting Championships 2008

2nd place World Brewers Cup 2011

National Championships:

UK Barista Champion 2006 & 2007

UK Coffee Tasting Champion 2008

UK Brewers Cup Champion 2011

I recorded and published six episodes of a podcast back in 2011. They have been downloaded more than 120,000 times.

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/jimseven/id422022996

The Coffee Jobs Podcast was created to dive deeper into the challenges around both hiring and career progression in the coffee industry. Each episode is a dedicated interview with a respected coffee professional.

http://coffeejobspodcast.com

I worked with Flavoractiv, and Coffee Specialists, to create a standardised kit of defects for coffee. This is the first of its kind available.

Available here.

I co-founded Longberry Publishing. The goal was to produce an “occasional journal of coffee”, writing about the subject in a way that we felt was broadly appealing. We wanted to dive into the unusual, esoteric and the niche and showcase them to a wider audience.

We closed the company in 2018.

I created Coffee Jobs Board to help passionate coffee businesses connect with passionate coffee people. Originally a London-focused board, it grew and grew and now covers a number of cities and countries.

The goal was to make it easier to find passionate people, and it hopefully helped hundreds of businesses with the tricky task of recruitment.

I sold the company in 2017, and it continues to grow and go from strength to strength. It is probably the most popular coffee jobs focused site online right now.

https://www.coffeejobsboard.com/

Brewed by Hand was a company created to be the exclusive distributor for Hario in the UK. It was a collaborative effort with Square Mile Coffee Roasters and Coffee Hit.

The company was sold in 2016, and continues to grow and distribute an increasing number of brands in the UK, including Wilfa and Loveramics.

I was a co-founder a former director of the company.

https://www.brewedbyhand.com/