London startup Pact Coffee moved out of its office after failing to raise a £1 million crowdfunding round
Pact Coffee
The office was spread over two floors of an old Victorian biscuit factory, with exposed brickwork and original beams throughout. It also boasted a barista bar and enough space for cyclists to ride in straight off the street, according to TimeOut.
Founded in 2012 by Stephen Rapoport, Pact Coffee delivers freshly roasted coffee by post. The company says that its coffee is roast, ground, and shipped all within seven days.
The startup's office, which housed up to 75 Pact Coffee employees at one point, has been taken over by neighbour Entrepreneur First - an organisation that helps individuals form deeply-technical companies through a 12-month startup programme.
Pact Coffee's move comes after the startup failed to hit a £1 million crowdfunding target last March. The Crowdcube campaign was terminated early, with the company raising just £190,000, less than a fifth of its overall target. Pact Coffee cut 16 jobs shortly after terminating the campaign.
"As you know, we made 16 redundancies back in May 2016 and moved office as a result as we didn't need so many desks," Rapoport told Business Insider by email, adding that Pact Coffee has been in its new office for four months.
Rapoport added that "The Grindhouse" - home to Pact Coffee's lab, roasting, grinding, and packaging - remains next to Pact Coffee's old office. "It was only the lowly desk-jockeys like myself that moved." The new office is a short walk from the old office and The Grindhouse.
Pact Coffee has several thousand customers across the UK. When it announced the crowdfunding campaign, it said it wanted to raise more capital in order to scale-up, go international, and take advantage of a "home coffee" market that Pact Coffee believes to be worth over £1 billion.
Prior to the crowdfunding campaign, well-known investor Robin Klein invested in the company, as did venture capital firm MMC Ventures. To date, Pact Coffee has raised a total $8.1 million (£5.6 million).
"Pact has continued to grow steadily throughout the year," Rapoport added. "When the time comes for a larger logistics facility, it will be a complex/costly operation to move but we've never shied away from a challenge."
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