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Brand review · 4 min readThe Bean Shop coffee review
What The Bean Shop sells, what it costs against the rest of the market, and who should buy it.
The Bean Shop sells 23 coffees in the UK and the cheapest comes out at 58p a cup, which is less than most of the whole bean coffee we track. Cheap coffee is easy to find and hard to trust, so the useful question is not whether it is cheap. It is what the range actually contains, and whether the bag doing the heavy lifting is the one you would want.
Short answer
A middle-of-the-road medium roast, black or white, for below the going rate.
Cheaper than 68% of the whole bean coffee we track
- Tastes
- Balanced, caramel and chocolate
- Strength
- Medium
- Best for
- Everyday coffee, black or white
- Valuecup price vs the format median
- 3/5
- Easy to likefrom the roast profile
- 5/5
- Good for beginnersblend, roast and pack size
- 5/5
Cheapest cup£0.58across 23 products
Against the market−9%vs the whole bean median
Two cups a day£8.06a week, £0.76 less than typical
Mostly roastedMediumcaramel, balanced
Buy it ifyou want the same cup every time
Skip it ifHalo Coffee 2018 at 58p would do
What kind of roaster this is
The Bean Shop sells whole bean in the UK, and we track 23 of their coffees, in 250g and 120g.
96% of the The Bean Shop range we can classify is blended. Blending has a bad name it does not deserve; it is how a roaster keeps a coffee tasting like itself when the harvest behind it changes, and it is the reason your regular bag is still your regular bag in January. The buying reaches 13 countries across the range, which is a wide book for a brand this size. The roasting spans 4 of our five levels, so there is a genuine choice to make inside the range rather than one house style applied to everything. Nothing here comes in a kilo bag. That keeps the coffee fresher in your cupboard and costs you the bulk discount, which is the trade you are making whether or not anyone points it out.
Formats and origins
What The Bean Shop sources and sells. Each one is a live filter across every brand we track.
What The Bean Shop coffee costs
The range runs from 58p to 71p a cup across 23 products. That is a 1.2× spread inside a single brand, which is why "is The Bean Shop expensive" is the wrong question; the right one is which bag you pick. The cheapest is Espresso Blend in the 250g, and the dearest is Dark Caramel Chocolate 120G/4.2OZ in the 120g.
| Product | Format | Size | Per cup | Per kg |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Espresso Blend | whole bean | 250g | £0.58 | £32.00 |
| The Bean Shop Blend | whole bean | 250g | £0.58 | £32.00 |
| CHAS Charity Blend | whole bean | 250g | £0.58 | £32.00 |
| Morning Blend | whole bean | 250g | £0.58 | £32.00 |
| Biscuit Blend | whole bean | 250g | £0.58 | £32.00 |
| Air Ambulance Charity SCAA Blend | whole bean | 250g | £0.58 | £32.00 |
| Blend 67 | whole bean | 250g | £0.58 | £32.00 |
| Bright Roast Blend | whole bean | 250g | £0.58 | £32.00 |
| Colombia Cafe Sofia Supremo | whole bean | 250g | £0.58 | £32.00 |
| Gourmet Blend | whole bean | 250g | £0.58 | £32.00 |
| India Monsoon Malabar | whole bean | 250g | £0.58 | £32.00 |
| Old Brown Java | whole bean | 250g | £0.58 | £32.00 |
Bags themselves run £4.75 to £9.50. Ignore that column. A bigger bag costs more and almost always costs less per cup, which is the only number that follows you home.
The one to buy
If you buy one thing from The Bean Shop, buy Espresso Blend. At 58p a cup it comes in around 9% under the median for whole bean coffee, and that is measured against every brand in our catalogue rather than against The Bean Shop's own list prices. Nothing else in the range gets close on that test.
What that costs over a year
How much coffee do you drink?
- The Bean Shop£0.58 per cup£420
- Typical whole bean£0.63 per cup, our median£460
At 2 cups a day, The Bean Shop costs £39 less a year than the typical whole bean coffee we track. That is the same coffee habit, bought better.
How The Bean Shop tastes
We have not tasted The Bean Shop, so we are not going to invent a tasting note. A flavour score we did not earn would be worth less than none, and this section would be the easiest place on the site to quietly make one up. What we can show you is measured: where every coffee in the range sits on our own five-point roast scale, and which origins go into it. Roast is the strongest single predictor of whether a cup arrives bright and fruity or dark and chocolatey, so it is the closest honest answer to what this brand is like to drink.
How The Bean Shop roasts
Every coffee standardised onto our own five-point scale rather than the roaster's. Read these as tendencies: origin, process and how you brew all move the cup.
Who it suits
- People who found something they like and want it to taste the same next year, which is what a blend is for.
- Slow drinkers, and anyone who would rather buy little and often than watch a kilo go stale.
- People who want to choose their own roast rather than take the roaster's word for it, since the range covers 4 of our five levels.
Is it good value?
Our test is simple, and it is the same one we apply to everything: cost per cup against the median for the same format. The Bean Shop lands around the middle. It is not the cheapest way to a cup of coffee, and the money above the median buys convenience and consistency rather than a smaller bill. Whether that is a fair trade is genuinely your call, not ours.
The Bean Shop products we track
Cheapest per cup first, with live prices.
Prices are the last we fetched and can move. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. It never changes the order, which is always cheapest per cup first.
What else to consider
No brand is worth buying without knowing what sits next to it on price. These are the closest whole bean coffees we track to The Bean Shop, and the comparison hubs will put all of them on the same per-cup basis if you want to go wider.
Coffees priced like The Bean Shop
The closest whole bean coffees on price per cup, from brands we also track. If one of these is cheaper for the same thing, that is worth knowing before you order.
Compare against the market
Keep reading
PricesThe Bean Shop price guideEvery bag priced per cup and per kilo, with the cheapest route to each one.BrandAll The Bean Shop pricesLive prices on all 23 products, cheapest cup first.CompareEvery whole bean coffeeAll 812 of them on one per-cup basis, filterable by roast and origin.ReviewHalo Coffee 2018 reviewThe closest brand to The Bean Shop on price, at 58p a cup.OffersToday's best valueEverything currently priced well under the median for its own format.