Uplands Roast

Uplands Roast is a specialty roastery focused entirely on Vietnamese coffee, roasting daily in Edinburgh. The founders started sourcing directly from farms in Vietnam in 2017 and have returned repeatedly to visit producers and build trading relationships.

Their stated motivation for going direct was dissatisfaction with the gap between what farmers earn and how ethical sourcing is marketed by larger players. The Meadows coffee shop in central Edinburgh serves as both a retail outlet and a community space where customers can watch roasting happen in the open air.

The roastery's narrowly focused origin approach is genuinely uncommon in the UK market: most specialty roasters cover multiple countries, whereas Uplands Roast has built the business specifically around Vietnamese coffee.