Nine people and a machine called Ada.

Copperwheel is what happened when a Q grader with strong opinions met an engineer who cannot leave a broken machine alone. Ten years on, the whole operation still fits under one Victorian roof.

The story

It started with a breakdown.

In 2015 Jess Arden was running a café in Crookes and losing sleep over a dying secondhand roaster. Marcus Oyelaran, a maintenance engineer at a Rotherham steel plant, answered her classified ad. He did not fix the roaster; he declared it scrap, then found her a seized 1958 Probat in a Dutch barn and spent eleven months rebuilding it in his garage.

They named the machine Ada, took a lease on a derelict grinding works on Alma Street, and roasted their first commercial batch in March 2016. Jess runs coffee: buying, cupping, profiles. Marcus runs everything with a motor in it. Neither has ever won an argument against the other, which is roughly the quality system.

Today the team is nine: two roasters, a production lead, a wholesale manager, four espresso bar crew, and whoever's dog is under the cupping table that day.

Overhead view of a roaster operating the drum roaster beside the roast profiling laptop

People

The crew.

Jess Arden

Co-founder, Head of Coffee. Licensed Q grader. Buys every lot, writes every roast profile, and once rejected a coffee eleven times before the twelfth sample made the shelf. Drinks the Kenyan, black, no exceptions.

Marcus Oyelaran

Co-founder, Head Roaster and Engineer. Rebuilt Ada bolt by bolt and services her every Sunday. Keeps a machining lathe at the works and has never once called a repair company. Flat white, two sugars, proudly.

Priti Lakhani

Wholesale Manager. Ex-café owner, which is why partners trust her. Knows every account's machine, grinder and opening hours from memory, and answers the 7am emergency line without being asked.

One roof

Roasting, cupping, training, packing and the espresso bar all share the same floor. If a batch is off, the person who roasted it hears about it before lunch.

Published prices

Every autumn we publish what we paid for every contract, alongside the benchmark price. Nobody has to take our word for how we buy.

Awards on the shelf

Two Great Taste stars for Wheelhouse in 2023, UK Coffee Roasting Championship finalist in 2024, and Best Independent Roastery at the 2024 Exposed Awards. The trophies hold door stops down; the cupping table stays in charge.