(Bloomberg) -- Morning latte decisions are about to get harder in London.

Blank Street Coffee, the fast-growing Brooklyn, N.Y.-based chain, is bringing its inexpensive espresso to the U.K.’s capital in June. The first location is set for Fitzrovia, near University College London. The company plans to open additional locations in quick succession in the area while expanding into the residential Marylebone neighborhood.

Blank Street is accustomed to moving fast. The chain was started in Williamsburg in summer 2020 by Vinay Menda and Issam Freiha. They now have 29 places around New York, from downtown Brooklyn to the Upper West Side; they plan to have 100 locations in the city by the end of this year.

This year the company will also open two-dozen shops in the U.K. The expansion follows recovery in Britain’s coffee shop market to £4.4 billion ($5.7 billion) in revenue last year. The number of U.K. coffee shops now exceeds pre-pandemic levels.

“Our second-biggest city will be in London,” says Menda, who grew up there and is a former managing partner at Reshape Ventures, a venture capital firm.

Blank Street’s expansion is fueled by more than caffeine. In 2021 it raised $60 million, including $25 million in Series A Funding from General Catalyst Partners LLC and Tiger Global Management LLC.

Key to the Blank Street formula is to undersell the ubiquitous competitors. A Blank Street latte sells for $3.50; at Starbucks Corp., a grande latte costs $4.95; at Dunkin’ Donuts Inc. a medium latte goes for $4.29. “We’re about 25% to 35% cheaper than Starbucks on espresso,” says Menda.  Buying beans locally, from such companies as Parlor Coffee Roasters in Brooklyn, helps keep costs down, he says.

The price of a London latte hasn’t yet been determined. "I can tell you that we'll serve high-quality specialty coffee, and our prices will be cheaper than Costa Coffee and either the same price or cheaper than Pret a Manger," says Menda.

A further aspect of Blank Street’s formula is to sell their beverages out of small spaces with inexpensive rents, as well as from retro-styled trucks that could double as mini-Airstream trailers. Occasionally, they’ll share a space with another brand; in Park Slope, part of the store is operated by The Sill, who specialize in potted plants.

Indoor hangout spaces filled with people staring at laptops are not part of the equation; smaller-footprint locations help keep operating costs down.

“We have [monthly] rents and licensing fees that range from $1,000 to $10,000,” says Jonathon Maine, a former WeWork executive who heads real estate and development for the company. The size of a given space depends on the neighborhood: Some carts have as little as 50 square feet; even the largest, at up to 700 square feet, is less than half the size of most small coffee shops in New York. Installing a Blank Street coffee shop is a straightforward process. “Build-outs take about four weeks,” says Maine.

Looking past 2022, Blank Street is eyeing such high-density East Coast cities as Boston and Washington. It is already teaming up with popular local brands such as Brooklyn’s King David Taco trucks, “powered by Blank Street,” in locations like Manhattan’s Madison Square Park. “We’re the anti-ghost kitchen,” says Menda, who has his sights set on a big name competitor in the future. “We want to be Starbucks for the next generation”—but “with better quality, lower prices.”   

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