Colonna Coffee

Colonna Coffee traces its origins to Bath, UK, where Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood (then trading as Colonna & Small's) opened its flagship cafe in 2009. A three-time UK Barista Champion and multiple World Barista Championship finalist, Colonna-Dashwood built his reputation on treating coffee as a sensory and scientific discipline — a philosophy that runs through every corner of the business, from water chemistry research to sourcing relationships.

The Bath shop launched with a deliberate pivot away from the house-coffee model then standard across British cafes. Rather than anchoring the menu to a single espresso blend, Colonna-Dashwood introduced a constantly rotating selection designed to redirect the customer's attention from drink format to the coffee's actual origin and taste. The roastery side of the business followed in 2015, giving the team direct control over roast profiling. A London outpost on Leather Lane opened in 2023, extending the Bath concept to a second city.

Colonna's roasting approach reflects the same research-forward ethos as its founder's competition work. Colonna-Dashwood co-authored Water for Coffee with Dr. Christopher Hendon of MIT — a peer-reviewed study on how mineral composition shapes extraction — and that analytical rigor carries into how the company selects and profiles green coffee. The menu skews toward single origins rotated on an ongoing basis, favoring transparency about provenance over the consistency of a fixed house espresso.