A Little Bit
About Us
There are a few famous Ernies… Hemingway, Wise, Els… but in our part of the World only one Ernie reigns supreme. Named after a 1960’s electric milk float – 5 decades before e:vehicles became a thing – which we originally bought to help us avoid congestion charges; we quickly concluded that our money-saver was more of a planet-saver.
We took to refurbishing Ernie – our trusty electric vehicle – back to his former glory and set him out to deliver our coffee in a more environmentally responsible way. Since then we’ve found other ways of getting around London to deliver coffee and Ernie has welcomed a fleet of state-of-the-art cargo bike partners, each with their own moniker, to take some of the pressure off his old pistons.
Go green with Ernie
Our Roastery
Set in Elephant and Castle in central London, our roastery is where the magic happens and where our speciality graded beans are roasted. All our coffee is ethically sourced from trusted, established and accredited brokers or through direct trade with farms and growers. We hand roast using single origin or unique blends, carefully curated by our custodian master roasters.
Our focus on the Capital means none of our deliveries have to travel far, so our products arrive as fresh as the daisies you’ll see when you plant our seeded paper tags.
We love it when people visit our roastery and you’re welcome at any time to pop in and roast some beans for yourself, or join us for a cold brew or one of our famous nitro-espresso martinis.
Ernie's forest
We work in partnership with Tree-Nation to stop deforestation and combat climate change. We plant trees, in our very own Ernie Forest, for every 6 kg of coffee ordered.
Click here to see the Ernie forest.
FAQ
At checkout, you have the option for a one-off delivery or subscribe for regular deliveries. You can arrange your ongoing deliveries for a time that suits you and even skip a delivery if needed.
When you receive your coffee delivery you’ll notice there are a number of tags attached to the container. We recommend you do not remove them as we re-use and recycle or plant them, so nothing goes to waste.
With an account, once you have enjoyed your coffee you’ll have containers to hand back to us when we return to make the next delivery. We’ll deliver full containers and collect the empties from you. If you choose not to reorder from Ernie at any point, please contact us for container collection so the containers go back into the system and not the waste cycle.
Although we choose plastic for our containers they are the BEST material for durability, to keep our coffee fresh and save further resources from the manufacturing and recycling chain. Our container lids, elastic and labels are all reusable for hundreds, if not thousands, of deliveries. At the end of their lives we upcycle them in collaboration with ‘smile plastics’. Our electric bike cargo boxes have been created from our oldest containers.
The ID and tamper seal stickers are made from FSC approved paper and are not 100% recyclable, however, they are recycled when they can not be used anymore and they do not go into the waste stream.
When you order from Ernie you sign up to our terms and conditions. With all Ernie deliveries, containers are checked in and out. A log for this container transaction can be found in your dashboard. In the event containers are returned damaged a charge of £5.00 will apply. If the account is closed and containers are not returned, a charge of £5.00 per container will apply.
Yes, we’re not robots! Please call 0203 8838659 or email hello@ernie.london and we’ll always get back to you if we’re unable to answer you immediately.
Yes, we offer full-service sourcing, installing and maintaining machine(s) to cover all business needs. We also provide on-site training in machine usage and maintenance. Please contact us directly or complete our coffee machine form.
Its not rocket science… all Ernie deliveries are without single-use packaging so the savings generated are calculated versus a typical delivery with packaging, ie., ordinarily 1 kg of coffee would be supplied in one bag, therefore ordering 10 kg of Ernie coffee saves 10 non-recyclable bags from the waste stream.
Additionally, all Ernie deliveries are made using 100% carbon neutral electricity or pedal power. To calculate savings versus a typical London delivery in a diesel van, we use an average journey distance which is 5 km (calculation based on route efficiencies) and we know that for every 5 km delivery, 0.91 kgs of carbon is saved.
