Mobile Coffee Bars and Barista Hire – About Social Espresso

Mobile Coffee Bars, Coffee Machines & Baristas Across the UK & Europe – The Social Espresso Story

Starting with just one mobile coffee machine purchased from a well-known online auction site, and a home-built mobile coffee bar, the company was launched. Working initially from home, with equipment stored in the garage, Social Espresso grew quickly and established a strong reputation for high quality service, professionalism and reliability.

As the company expanded, the type and size of events multiplied, with barista hire for exhibitions becoming a speciality, alongside track days, conferences, press days, product launches and weddings.

During our first year, Social Espresso brewed thousands of drinks, including cappuccinos, lattes, espressos and hot chocolates, with milk options like whole, semi-skimmed, almond, and soy, plus a variety of teas. Our baristas and mobile coffee bars went everywhere from Glasgow to Goodwood, Silverstone to London’s West End, serving clients such as Harvey Nichols, Ferrari, Vogue, Habitat, and Superdry. A few particular highlights from 2016 were setting up a mobile coffee station in Silverstone’s Drivers’ Lounge, serving at multiple Ferrari track days at Goodwood, and introducing new custom cappuccino stencils.

Publicity shot for our first website

2017 – Coffee bars, grinders, machines… and searching for milk in Spain

Social Espresso had an exciting year packed with events in 2017, starting with the delivery of our new Mazzer coffee grinders that were put straight to work at a three-day ESPA press event in London. In March, we ran our first overseas event in Spain, serving 3,000 coffees from mobile coffee bars staffed by three of our baristas. It was at this event we discovered that sourcing fresh milk in Spain can be quite a challenge.

Spring and early summer were packed, providing baristas and coffee stands for UK events including press days for Diesel and Harvey Nichols, and collaborations with White Stuff, Asos, Google (on the night of the UK General Election), and our first-ever wedding barista bar.

In August, we took a brief pause to prepare for a busy autumn, which kicked off with events at Blenheim Palace and then a hectic September, where we provided baristas and mobile coffee bars for brands like TopShop and Fenty Beauty at London Fashion Week.

October saw more track days and press days, with Ferrari and Levi’s, while November was our busiest month, delivering twenty-one events across the UK and Ireland for clients such as Google and BooHoo. We ended the year with a photoshoot for Costa Coffee and a final event for Google in Ireland.

Mobile coffee bars and machines in our first unit

All in all 2017 was a fabulous year for us, not only in terms of events, but also expansion. And as the company got bigger, our equipment rapidly outgrew the garage and so we temporarily moved into a self-storage unit in November 2017 to have enough space to store our growing stock of coffee machines, mobile coffee bars, coffee bean grinders, and all the coffee making paraphernalia including jugs and consumables like stirrers, cloths, sugar, and of course coffee!

These early years were a bit of a challenge because there was no water or electricity at the self-storage unit, which made it more difficult to get all the mobile coffee machines fully cleaned, maintained and turned around quickly and efficiently between the many different coffee catering jobs.

In addition, the unit was located on the second floor, so preparing all the mobile coffee bars and other kit for a job beforehand, and then packing it all away on our return, always involved multiple trips in the lift!

2018 – More events, but not enough room for all our mobile coffee bars

It wasn’t long before it became clear we were quickly outgrowing the self-storage unit. We began looking for a larger premises, but it did take a long time to find a site that would suit our needs. We wanted to be located as close to central London as possible, but without the eye watering costs that usually go with such a location, so we wouldn’t have to pass those on to customers with higher prices. We finally settled on a 600 square foot premises situated in a railway arch in Deptford in Southeast London, and moved in during April 2018.

It made a huge difference to have all the space needed to store our coffee machines, mobile coffee bars and all the other kit, and also to be able to run the admin side our business from the same location. It immediately became much easier to achieve and maintain the very high-quality level of service that we strive to achieve.

Serving Lavazza coffee at Frieze London

As well as the warehouse move, 2018 was also another very busy year. Highlights included providing mobile baristas and coffee bars for the 13th Edition of Salon Privé at Blenheim Palace. Our mobile coffee stands were a great hit among visitors, especially as we used branded coffee cups to increase brand awareness for our clients.

Social Espresso also provided our speciality coffee from two branded mobile coffee bars at a multi-day event hosted by OnePlus, including dispensing homemade hot chocolate using a special serving backpack which we hired in especially for the event. We also staffed and ran a mobile coffee bar at the World Travel Market 2018 exhibition on the Colombia stand, serving a single origin Colombia coffee that we roasted ourselves.

Our final highlight of 2018 was providing a mobile coffee stands for Lavazza at the Frieze London & Frieze Master’s Art Fair in 2018. The team of 5 baristas set up four coffee stations with custom built coffee bars, and served over 6000 coffees across seven days, working with Lavazza to showcase their new Columbian coffee blend and getting some great feedback on our service.

2019 – Sky’s the limit – with ten baristas and mobile coffee stations for one event

One successful year was followed by another. One of the standout events of 2019 was running a10-barista coffee service for Sky’s major staff retreat. Catering to 600+ people, we managed four mobile coffee stations and a specially Sky branded truck. Most memorably, USA Secret Service agents halted our operations mid-event to secure the area for Hillary Clinton.

In September, for the third consecutive year, we supported Lavazza at London Fashion Week, providing five mobile coffee stands, complete with baristas, equipment, and top-tier service. Spanning five days, this iconic event is great fun and remains a highlight of the Social Espresso calendar.

We also travelled to beautiful Lake Lugano in Switzerland to provide our coffee-catering-service-for-conferences/ at a large medical event. Against the stunning backdrop of the lake’s crystal-clear waters and majestic mountains, our coffee bars became a focal point for delegates seeking relaxation and refreshment. Bringing our craft to such a breathtaking setting was truly unforgettable.

With our continued expansion, Social Espresso quickly outgrew the unit in the railway arch, and so we moved into a bigger unit in Deptford in October 2019, little knowing what was in store for us, and indeed, everyone else.

At Sky’s major staff retreat

2020 – A brief ‘interruption’

As an event-based company, our business was hit particularly hard by the Covid pandemic. As the lockdowns began in the UK in March 2020, a full diary of planned events vanished almost overnight, and like many other businesses we were left with an HQ in London with no staff around (but a lot of coffee machines, mobile coffee stands, coffee grinders and other kit) and a very uncertain future.

However, we were lucky enough to be able to pivot away from our core business and spent the time establishing Elsewhere Coffee Roasters, our very own coffee brand and sister company. Elsewhere began providing coffee by mail order, so that coffee lovers never needed to miss their favourite brew.

This helped us to continue trading through the ups and downs of the Covid lockdowns, until UK events finally started taking off again and we could fire up the mobile coffee bars and coffee machines once more. With event bookings coming in and an established coffee brand now in the mix, our HQ returned to its normal busy self.

Branded mobile coffee bar in London’s Excel

2021 & 2022 – Mobile coffee comes back to events with a bang

In terms of 2022 events, we started the year in real style with an unforgettable Ferrari track day, combining the brand’s luxury and excitement with our branded mobile coffee bars and expert barista service.

In May, we embarked on our first international event of the year in Copenhagen, that set the tone for an increasingly busy and rewarding year. One other standout moment was our trip to Barcelona. After months of quiet in the warehouse, the Social Espresso team embraced the chance to bring our coffee expertise to sunny Spain. Serving coffee from mobile coffee stands in such a vibrant setting felt like a major milestone, symbolising how far we’d all come since the pandemic.

Further expansion and renovation

But it wasn’t very long before space was starting to become a bit of a challenge… again! Our pallet space for new coffee machines and mobile coffee bars had all been used up and we urgently needed more to accommodate a stock of slick new La Marzocco machines we’d recently purchased. As luck would have it, the local theatre prop company in the unit next door to us were looking to move, and so we jumped at the chance to double our floorspace! In August 2022, we got the keys to our shiny new unit!

Only it wasn’t so shiny… It urgently required some TLC to bring it up to the Social Espresso standards. As you can see from the photos, there was an existing makeshift office space at the rear of the unit leftover from the previous tenants. The toilets were a dusty time capsule of the 1970s and the walls were the all too familiar 90s magnolia. It was safe to say we had quite a bit of work to do!

The first step was demolishing the office partitions. Jack got to work with a sledgehammer (rather excitedly) and before long all that remained was old timber and plasterboard. Once this was all removed, we cleaned and painted the walls white and began on the dusty, stained warehouse floor.

With a fresh white interior and new black glossy warehouse floors it was starting to look up to scratch. We installed new pallet racking and more than doubled our available storage space for coffee machines, mobile coffee bars and other mobile barista kit. Getting a full-sized forklift also meant we could fully utilise the height of the warehouse.

This all allowed us to expand all our setups to accommodate even larger events in our most busy periods. And alongside this we installed a brand-new workbench and coffee machine servicing area which has considerably streamlined our maintenance workflow.

Moving all our event coffee equipment over to our new second unit left our first unit and coffee roastery with loads more space. We had a few ideas but finally settled on a full-sized barista training room to focus on refining our brews. The quality of our coffee is paramount to us, and with the new training facility we can really make sure that we have consistently great coffees at every event.

Getting our new barista training room built

2023 – Luxury brands & serving coffee at almost 200 events

Our mobile coffee bars played a key role at no less than 197 events across the UK and Europe in 2023, serving tens of thousands of guests. One highlight was our partnership with Rosslyn Coffee at the Financial Times Weekend Festival, where we served espresso drinks using a new set of La Marzocco machines.

At Salon Privé 2023, we created a luxury coffee experience alongside supercars at Blenheim Palace. We also had a large presence at ESMO 2023 in Madrid, supporting sustainability with ethically sourced coffee and minimal waste.

For Google Zeitgeist, we set up five mobile coffee bars at the Grove Hotel, serving VIPs like Dermot O’Leary and Prince William. And we returned to the London Marathon for the second year, energising runners at the finish line.

The year also saw us increase our focus on sustainability too, and we began to make plans to reduce our ecological footprint further than we already had done, and laying the groundwork for a transition to fully electric vans for all our London events as part of our E-Event Initiative. Read more about our 2023 events here.

Going for the wood effect with Neosurf

2024 – Our biggest year to date

By 2024, it was time for yet another office and warehouse upgrade! After finding the perfect unit in Woolwich, we moved into our new home in May 2024 and set about transforming it into a workspace that truly feels like us.

As Social Espresso has grown, so has our vision for what we want our workspace to be:

• A hub for collaboration: A place where ideas and creativity flow as easily as coffee.
• A reflection of our brand: Warm, welcoming, and full of energy.
• A boost for well-being: Somewhere the team feels comfortable and at home.

We knew the right environment would make work more productive and enjoyable.

The Key Changes We Made

Coffee at the Centre: We’ve set up a fully equipped mobile coffee bar with top-tier machines and a rotating selection of specialty beans. It’s not just for grabbing a drink – it’s a space for connection, creativity, and, of course, great coffee.

Collaborative Areas: Open seating and flexible furniture make it easy to switch between group chats and solo work. It’s a bright, inviting space where brainstorming feels effortless.

A Touch of Nature: Natural light and plants bring a fresh, calming vibe while boosting everyone’s energy and mood.

Brand-Inspired Design: The office now feels like ‘us’ – with coffee-toned colours, bold graphics, and details that tell our story.

Quiet Zones: For those moments when focus is key, we’ve created peaceful areas to work or recharge.

Wellness Features: Ergonomic furniture and spaces designed to keep people moving make for a healthier, happier team.

Warehouse: And of course the whole place wouldn’t be without the warehouse space we need to keep all our kit. From our full compliment of top-of-the-range La Marzocco coffee machines and flight cases to store and transport them, to our range of mobile coffee bars, coffee grinders, smoothie machines and juicers.

Funky new office entrance and meeting room

The transformation has had a big impact, with the open layout making teamwork easier and more fun, and the vibrant space boosting energy and bringing us closer as a team.

Space for everyone

Our new office isn’t just for us, it’s a great place to meet clients and partners, whether for coffee tastings, strategy chats, or just a relaxed espresso break.

And the new space isn’t just a fresh design either, it’s a real symbol of where we’re going. As we keep growing, we’re excited to have a workspace that supports us, inspires us, and reflects the big dreams we’re chasing. We can’t wait to welcome you in for a coffee (or two)!

A few 2024 highlights…

Smiles all round for Social Espresso at Neom Wellbeing