One of the oldest shops in Soho’s market LondonAlgerian coffee houses that opened their doors in 1887 are still serving customers from all over the world 136 years later.

Its founder, the Algerian Mr. Hassan, has gone down in history. In the 1920s, the business was taken over by a Belgian, and in the 1940s by a British. His daughter married an Italian, Paul Crocetta, and today their daughters “run” the shop. Despite a “multinational change of ownership”, the business retained its original brand.

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“I have been working here all my life since I started walking,” says Marisa Crocetta. My sister and I were here on Saturdays doing very important work, at least we were led to believe (s.s. parents). We have been changing each other for the last 30 years. It’s like our home.”

Per tastefully dirty With a shop window filled with coffee makers and teapots, Marissa, her sister Daniella and their father Paul sell over 80 coffee beans and 120 teas from all over the world – even from places not known for their varieties like Australia and Malawi. According to Crocetta, some of these products are guaranteed hits. “We’ll never take them” off the shelves. Other varieties are provided by food fairs and their network of contacts. These are products that you will not find in a large supermarket. Crocetta admits that this small business could not compete with chains with the same products.

The diminutive size of Algerian coffee shops can be deceiving, as the store enjoys a great reputation and influence among coffee lovers. Although not the oldest coffee roaster in the British capital (probably The wine house of Jamaica, serving coffee since 1652.), coffee fanatics often fill the tiny shop.

“In many cases, you can tell someone is new to the store because they walk in, look around and sometimes say wow,” Crocetta comments.

Only one or two stores are older than the Algerian coffee shops in all of Soho. Confectionery Maison Bertaux, founded in 1871, is one of them.

Crosetta understands that their store is the exception to the rule in an ever-changing market. No one in the family feels the pressure and is not going to give up the old, “successful recipe”, as he puts it. “No one wants us to be more ‘brilliant’, people want us to stay the way we are (….) I think it’s important to keep old London and some of its history because if everything is new and modern, it starts to look like.”

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But it’s not just Londoners who can buy coffee from the Old Compton Street store. “We ship coffee all over the world,” says Crocetta. “This is nothing new,” he adds, pointing to an old sign advertising a mail-order service before the advent of the Internet.

“Obviously this has been happening since the store opened.”

Today, orders usually come from their website, and certainly not many signed letters are mailed. In difficult times for the economy, Crocetta recognizes that orders from abroad help businesses survive.

Why, in a huge online marketplace, do buyers still turn to an independent seller with 136 years of history?

“Maybe they want to support the physical store. They know us, they’ve met us, they like us. They like certain types of coffee – we have several blends that you won’t find anywhere else,” says Crocetta.

“We have been overwhelmed by the support we have received from our customers in the UK and around the world. All I can think of is that it’s partly because of the roast, partly because of us, and partly because of the coffee we offer. This is amazing”.