Lena
Founder & head roaster
Trained as an architect, quit for coffee. Runs the roaster on Tuesdays and can identify origin by smell about 60% of the time.
Home·Our story
A short history of the shop, the people behind the counter, and where the beans come from before they land in your cup.
Hearth & Bean started because we could not find a coffee in Worthing that tasted the way we wanted it to. Not that there was nothing here, there were plenty of places, but nothing that treated a flat white as anything more than a hot drink to sell you on your way to somewhere else.
So we opened one. Sort of by accident. We took the lease on a narrow shop two streets back from the pier, painted the walls ourselves over a fortnight, and borrowed an espresso machine from a friend who owed us one. It was meant to be a summer thing. That was six years ago.
These days we roast our own beans every Tuesday morning in the back of the shop. The pastries come out of the oven at half past seven, and if you are down before eight you will get a cardamom bun still warm enough to burn the roof of your mouth.
We know most of our regulars by name and by order. We will know yours by the third visit, and by the tenth we will already have started your drink by the time you have got through the door. Bring your laptop, your dog, your sourdough mood. Stay a while.
We opened on a Tuesday. Ran out of croissants by Friday. Started asking the baker across the road if he could put up his order.
We pivoted to a takeaway hatch through the front window and started delivering coffee beans up and down the south coast. Some of those customers still order beans by post.
A second-hand 5kg drum roaster from a place in Devon. It took us three months to work out how to use it properly. Everyone had a lot of very dark coffee that winter.
Amma came in for a coffee, said the flat white needed work, and never left. She runs the kitchen now.
The cardamom bun won the Beach Bake Prize at the Worthing Food Festival. We now sell 40 of them on a good day, and never enough on a Saturday.
Built by a lovely person in Worthing who was very patient about the fact that we kept changing our minds.
Small enough that you will meet all of us if you come in often enough.
Trained as an architect, quit for coffee. Runs the roaster on Tuesdays and can identify origin by smell about 60% of the time.
Grew up cooking in her mum's kitchen in Accra. Behind every one of the specials. The cardamom bun is her recipe.
Does the Saturday morning rush single-handed. Weekend regulars know Sam by their standing order.
These are the three green coffees we buy right now. We pay above the Fairtrade minimum, and we can tell you exactly who grew each one.