In partnership with the ECS+COHO Expo 2025, 24-26 November at the JW Marriott in Berlin, World Coffee Portal presents an exclusive series of interviews with influential voices in Europe’s coffee and hospitality industries
Roland Horne founded WatchHouse in 2014 and has scaled the boutique business into one of the most celebrated specialty coffee groups globally, with 22 UK stores, two in New York and a site in Dubai.
Horne has also led WatchHouse through multiple funding rounds, including raising £15m ($19m) over two campaigns last year, and has outlined an ambitious goal to operate more than 500 outlets globally by 2033.
What has been your biggest learning as a business leader in coffee?
That coffee on its own isn’t enough. Not if you want to build something lasting. The best businesses in this space understand that product, space, and service work together. You can’t separate them.
At WatchHouse, we call it ‘Modern Coffee’. It’s not just about the coffee itself. It’s about how it’s served, where it’s served, and the atmosphere people feel when they walk through the door. The design matters. The lighting matters. The welcome matters. We’ve learnt that you can roast the best beans in the world, but if the experience around it is lacking, it won’t land. Hospitality is a complete system. You can’t just obsess over the product part of it.
How do you stay entrepreneurial in an increasingly competitive and corporate environment?
By refusing to repeat ourselves. Each WatchHouse is different. Different layout, different design language, different feeling, because every location has a different context. We do not scale our Houses using a formula, but respond to where they are and who they’re for.
“The goal is to build something that lasts, and that means constantly asking what needs to evolve”
Staying entrepreneurial means staying curious. You have to keep questioning how you do things, even when those things are working. We make space for the team to feed into that process.
We’re growing, yes. But we’re not chasing scale for its own sake. The goal is to build something that lasts, and that means constantly asking what needs to evolve.
What are the biggest challenges when scaling a premium coffee brand?
Maintaining clarity. As a business grows, more variables come into play. More people, more locations, more complexity. The risk is drift. It rarely happens all at once – it happens through small, subtle compromises. A shortcut here, a weaker hire there. Over time, the standard slips, and the brand loses its edge.
At WatchHouse, we use the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) to keep everyone on the same path. The goals are clear, and everyone knows what we’re building and how their work connects to that plan. It gives us alignment and discipline, which is essential when things move fast.
Our values shape how we show up. ‘Can do’, ’empathy’, ’passion’, ’diligence’ –they’re not just words on a wall; they’re used in hiring, in performance reviews, in how we make decisions. You can’t scale quality without culture. And you can’t scale culture without clarity. That’s the hard part. Keeping the standard high, the culture strong, and the team aligned, even as the business becomes more complex.
This interview is proudly presented by ECS+COHO Expo 2025, taking place from 24-26 November at the JW Marriott Berlin.
Tickets are still available online! Don’t miss this opportunity to immerse yourself in Europe’s premier coffee and hospitality gathering.
