Don’t mocha us! Not all Guardian hacks full of beans over coffee shop launch

Something hot and steamy was brewing at Guardian HQ this week. No, it wasn’t about to go all red top on us with a world exclusive kiss and tell. Instead, the iPad app, wallchart publisher and occasional newspaper decided to diversify its bewildering number of revenue streams by opening a coffee shop in achingly cool Shoreditch.

Despite the total lack of fanfare for the launch of #guardiancoffeee (for any sub-editors gouging out their eyes, that hashtag is real), it was soon trending on Twitter where it got, it’s fair to say, a mixed reception.

The Guardian said of its new venture: “#guardiancoffee is a fantastic example of how we are bringing our open journalism approach to life, by taking our leading technology reporting to where technology actually is: driving real-time debate and engagement among the creative tech community.”

But it hasn’t convinced all its own staff of the merits of adding beans to bylines. As one King’s Place scribe put it to Axegrinder: “#guardiancoffee is a fantastic example of how we love wasting money, by opening a coffee shop in a place where there are already loads of coffee shops and forgetting that our job is to sell news, something we need to get rather better at and quickly.”
Flat whites all round!