Edinburgh's Fortitude Coffee owners Matt and Helen Carroll prepare to open new Abbey Mount shop

An Edinburgh coffee business which began trading 10 years ago is set to open a new shop in Abbey Mount next month.

Launched by husband and wife duo Matt and Helen Carroll shortly after getting married, Fortitude Coffee has grown steadily since the arrival of their first shop in York Place in 2014, with other shops having opened in Stockbridge in 2020 and in Newington last year.

But after deciding to close their original York Place store earlier in the year – Matt and Helen couldn’t resist the opportunity to begin a new venture after seeing an available lease in a vibrant part of the city.

Matt said: “We closed our York Place shop at the end of September. It was coming up to its 10th year and it was a scenario where the lease was up, the city centre is not what it once was so we decided to call it a day there. Then the opportunity at Abbey Mount presented itself pretty much a day after we decided to close, so it was very serendipitous in that sense.”

Selling speciality coffee in store alongside offering a seasonal coffee subscription service, which sees customers have a different coffee blend delivered to them each month, Fortitude Coffee also operates an in-house roastery in Granton, distributing beans to shops across the Capital.

Speaking ahead of the arrival of their Abbey Mount shop, which is expected to open in the first week of November, Matt said: “There’s always nerves in the sense that you never 100 per cent know how things are going to go, but everyone we have heard from in the community sound pretty excited that we’re opening, so I am hoping that we will hit the ground running and we have a feeling that we’ve got this – we can do this.

“We weren’t planning on opening another one but it feels like the perfect area for us. It’s got the right clientele, it’s already got an established café culture and a part of town where people go to meet and drink and there are only a couple of places around here that are doing speciality coffee, so that provides a good opportunity for us.”