Britain's most expensive coffee revealed as £265 cup using beans from Japan's 'island of eternal youth'
18 April 2024, 11:35 | Updated: 18 April 2024, 11:45
A London coffee shop is serving up Britain's most expensive brew, with a humble cup of joe poised to set you back a staggering £265.
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Sold by Shot, a coffee shop with branches in Mayfair, Marylebone, and further afield in Kuwait, just one cup of this unique coffee will set you back an eye-watering three-figure price tag.
Direct from Japan's 'island of eternal youth', the typica beans are shipped to the UK from the Nakayama estate, based on the Okinawa Island in Japan.
It's a location that massively inflates the beans' price tag, given coffee is very rarely grown in the region.
The typica bean, first exported from the island in 2015, is widely considered to be a higher quality variety of the standard arabica bean found in most coffee shops.
It's a cup that packs a punch - and it's more than just the caffeine content, with Mayfair establishment Shot claiming the bean is ordered two or three times a day.
Available in all the forms you might expect from a London coffee shop, caffeine fans can order the bean as a simple espresso, macchiato, flat white, americano, cappuccino or latte.
Bags of the Japanese bean can be purchased online and retail for £1,480 per kilo - which suggests each cup has a fair markup.
Beans of such a price are rarely available in standard coffee shops, with experts noting they're more generally bagged or kept as collectors items.
On the brand's Instagram page, cups of the coffee are shown being served to customers beside Bentleys and Porsches.
Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood, a three-time UK barista champion, told the Telegraph: “Hardly anyone grows coffee in Japan.”
“It typically grows in the tropics, either side of the equator. It’s very hard to grow in places like Japan and probably needs a lot of help."
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“Rarity is obviously sought-after in coffee, and most of the ‘fancy’ coffee people drink is all arabica.
"Typica, which is what is used here, is not the most sought-after variety of arabica – I’ve never seen a typica that expensive before – which suggests the value is coming from the fact that it’s grown in Japan.”
The coffee variety is one of seven house special coffees served up at Shot, including a £70 'Savannah Zombie' and a £32 'St Helena', the latter of which is produced on the island’s Wrangham Estate.
Prior to Shot's pricing, another Mayfair coffee shop, Queens of Mayfair, claimed to serve up “the most expensive cup of coffee in the UK”.
Each cup was accompanied by a price tag of £50 - a drink that had only 15 servings available.
