Grind coffee bars and restaurants founder David Abrahamovitch talks Instagram, airports, and the City
Since the company’s inception in 2011, Grind coffee shops and restaurants have captured the imagination of London’s millennials as a place to eat, party and Instagram. Now the brand is set to expand beyond the capital in a deal with travel food operator SSP.
City A.M. caught up with Grind’s founder and chief executive David Abrahamovitch as he prepares for the business’s next phase.
Q. Why did you decide to team up with SSP to get Grind into stations and airports?
A. We started out just doing coffee, then that became coffee and cocktails. Now we have restaurants as well. We like doing café-bars but the reality is, in central London in particular, that model is getting really hard. And then SSP came along. They recognised a requirement for a branded, high-end quality coffee chain that they can put into travel sites along with a Starbucks for people who don’t want to go there anymore.
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Q. Do you think consumers are looking for that level of quality even when they’re on the go?
A. Absolutely. The food and drink trade has changed so much in the last five years. When we first opened Shoreditch Grind in 2011, no one knew what a flat white was. Now you’ve got McDonald’s talking about a flat white in TV adverts. Just because people are getting on a plane or on a train, they still want the stuff they have normally.
Q. How closely do you get to work on the new branches?
A. We still get to design the stores, we do co-recruitment, we even train the team in our roastery in Shoreditch. But where they’ve got the expertise is getting stuff built in airports where every member of the construction team has to be vetted two months in advance and every screw has to go through an X-ray machine!
Q. Your core business in London includes prime locations like the Royal Exchange, London Bridge, and Old Street Roundabout. How did you manage to secure those?
A. We’ve been lucky to be approached by good landlords, to have a good brand that people want. It’s funny because historically landlords wanted Prets and Starbucks because of the amazing covenant. Then they went away from that completely and only wanted independents. In 2011-2014, they were peak anti-chain, which worked out for us.
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Q. All the London branches of Grind look fantastic. How much do you think about Instagram appeal?
A. We make beautiful locations that also photograph really well. It’s not about just making people take a picture, it’s about creating beautiful environments to be in. For instance we spent a lot of money replacing wooden tables with marble purely to make it look better on Instagram. Or when we place a neon sign in a restaurant, we think about whether it will look good, and if there is somewhere to stand and get a nice square photo of it.
Q. Are you planning to open any more branches?
A. We’re trying to find some now. We’re very keen to do one or two more restaurants, it’s a good time because lots of stuff is coming onto the market. We’d love to go to King’s Cross, the Southbank, Canary Wharf, Victoria. We’d like to do a restaurant in the City and a big restaurant in Shoreditch. We want places where you’ve got a bit of office, bit of residential, and a bit of something going on at the weekend. We work best when we have all sorts of people all day and all night and it’s packed.
Read more: Grind mulls a second site in the City as expansion ramps up