92 Degrees Coffee opens inside a Sainsbury's store

92 Degrees Coffee opened its first supermarket café inside a Sainsbury's superstore in Neston, Cheshire, on 16 September, taking the 20-site specialty chain into a retail format it has never tried before.

Founder Jack Brewitt built the business from a single Liverpool unit into more than 20 cafés across north west England and Scotland, roasting its own beans and running a wholesale side alongside the retail estate. The Sainsbury's counter is smaller than a standalone café, fitted into existing floor space rather than requiring a new unit, and more openings inside Sainsbury's stores are planned before the end of the year.

A specialty roaster tries supermarket retail

A 20-site roaster just bet that a supermarket aisle can hold specialty coffee without watering it down.

Supermarket concessions have mostly gone to national chains able to guarantee consistent supply across hundreds of stores; a 20-site independent roaster taking on the format is a smaller bet for both sides. For 92 Degrees, it is a way to reach customers who would not otherwise seek out one of its cafés. For Sainsbury's, it adds a specialty name to food halls built mostly around national chains and own-brand counters.

Brewitt has described the move as a way to put the company's coffee in front of a wider customer base without diluting the roasting and quality standards built at its own sites, a balance that has undone other independent chains when they scaled into grocery retail too quickly.

Coffee retail keeps testing new formats

The Neston opening lands in a year when specialty coffee has kept pushing into new retail formats and record-setting sourcing, from a Congolese lot setting a record price at a London auction to roasters chasing traceable, single-origin beans even as they look for cheaper ways to reach more drinkers. A supermarket counter, run at supermarket margins, sits at the opposite end of that spectrum from an auction lot bought by the kilo.

Whether the Sainsbury's format spreads beyond Neston will depend on how the counter performs against the standalone cafés it is designed to complement rather than replace.