You may know Roasting House is a husband & wife company, and in 2021, just as the pandemic was ending and after we invested in our business to hopefully come out of it stronger we were dealt a blow we weren’t prepared for; our “good” residential landlord of over seven years gave us a no fault eviction and we had three months to get out, which was essentially by Christmas that year.
There was profit for them in making us homeless and that is all they cared about. This is the second time we have been made homeless by landlords, it was a major reason we moved out of London to Nottingham. It’s the reason we’re now in Sheffield (where Adam was born) as we couldn’t find somewhere suitable to live in Nottingham.
We’ve always been lucky enough to access to cheap(ish) credit such as credit cards, or meager savings that allowed things like AirBnB until we had somewhere to live or putting essential expenses on a card to spread the cost. Neither of us have parents to move back to (where “bank of mum & dad” seems to be the assumption of ministers) and if circumstances had been slightly worse we may have had nowhere to go and literally be on the streets.
Homelessness can happen to anyone including the supposedly “middle class” people like us. It starts with someone (usually landlords) wanting to profit off the basic human right of having somewhere to live. The scramble from that point costs time, effort, and money that you are not putting into anything else because kicking as hard as you can to keep your head above drowning is all that matters.
Part of that scramble for us was the idea of Year of Coffee. A discount for people willing to pay of all their year’s coffee in one go and a much needed cash injection for us.
Our customers are amazing and we had sign-ups pretty much straight away. People that have been with us for years on a pay as you go immediately committed to another year in one go and have done so again and again in to 2026. We was incredibly humbled as it was like asking your bosses for an advance on some of your next year’s wages and them being so happy with your work they obliged.
Roasting House is now in a good place, we have our ups and downs like any small business but because personally, our small terraced and crucially mortgaged home on the outskirts of Sheffield can not be taken from us on the whim of a landlord.
This is why 10% of the profits for Year of Coffee 2026 will be going to the homeless charity Shelter. If you’ve already signed up, those profits will also be included in the donation to Shelter along with any future sign-ups, such as gifts (not so subtle hint there).
Why Shelter: Year of Coffee was born out of a reaction to an affordable housing crisis. You don’t need us to tell you just how bad housing is in the UK but please go to Shelter’s website (https://shelter.org.uk/) for a reminder, where currently their England headline is “Every 12 minutes this Christmas, a family will lose their home”. This was us four years ago. Circumstances that lead to losing a home are often instant and out of the blue, especially when you’re not fully in control and rely on the word of someone who is only in it for profit. It can happen to anyone.
We’ve been incredibly lucky thanks to our small coffee roasting business, but luck isn’t the reality for the majority.
By signing up to Year of Coffee you help small businesses like us continue to offer amazing coffee you can enjoy all year as well as helping us support causes that mean a lot to us.
