Rooms upstairs
Stay above the coffee bar at ConnectionCafe.com, Shoreditch
Eight rooms on the two floors above our roastery and kitchen. Breakfast at the bar, fresh beans and a brewer in the room, your own code on the street door — from £139 a night.
What it is really like
A guest house above a working coffee bar, described honestly
The rooms at ConnectionCafe.com are not a hotel that happens to serve coffee. They sit directly above a bar that opens at seven, a kitchen that runs all day and a basement roastery that has been going since 2016. That is the whole reason to stay here, so it is worth knowing what it sounds like before you book.
Tuesday is roasting day. The 5kg drum starts at about 7:00 and runs for roughly two hours, and on the front of the building you will hear a low hum through the boards and smell it long before you are properly awake. Guests either love that or book a rear-facing room, and both are entirely reasonable. The bar gets busy from eight, but the front rooms have secondary glazing that takes out most of the street and nearly all of the queue, and the four rooms at the back face a courtyard where the loudest thing is usually a pigeon.
The building is Victorian and the rooms are on the first and second floors, with no lift. Reception is staffed around the clock for guests, the street door works on your own key code, and quiet hours on the guest floors start at 22:00 — so a late train is fine, a late party is not. Everything we serve downstairs, from the espresso to the bread, is listed on the ConnectionCafe.com menu, and if you want to know why the coffee tastes the way it does, our roasting and sourcing page is the long version.
Rooms & rates
Three room types, eight rooms in total
Four Kiln Doubles at the back, three Roastery Rooms at the front and one Loft Suite on the top floor — that is the entire guest house. Every rate below is per room per night, includes VAT, and comes with breakfast, a 250g bag of the current house roast and the kit to brew it.
Four of the eight rooms
The Kiln Double
Four of these sit at the back of the building, away from the street. Handmade beds, blackout linen curtains and a grinder with a weekly bag of house coffee on the side table.
These face the courtyard, so Kiln Street barely reaches them. The trade-off is a smaller window and a walk-in shower rather than a tub. If you are here to work, the desk seats one comfortably and there are sockets on both sides of the bed.
- Rear-facing and quiet
- Pour-over kit and fresh beans
- Walk-in rain shower
- Breakfast in the cafe
Best for solo travellers, light sleepers, and anyone who wants to wake up above a roastery without actually hearing it.
Check dates for The Kiln Double
Three of the eight rooms
The Roastery Room
Directly above the roastery, which means on Tuesday mornings the whole room smells like the best possible alarm clock. Tiled bathroom, deep tub, thick towels.
Be clear-eyed about roasting day. The 5kg drum starts around 7:00 every Tuesday and runs for roughly two hours, and you will hear a low hum through the floor. These rooms sit at the front, where secondary glazing takes out the street — it was never designed to take out our own roaster.
- Roasting-day mornings
- Deep soaking tub
- Desk and fast Wi-Fi
- Complimentary cupping session
Best for two people staying several nights, and for anyone who books a Monday deliberately so that Tuesday starts with the smell of a fresh roast.
Check dates for The Roastery Room
One of the eight rooms
The Loft Suite
The whole top floor: a double-height window, a reading chair that people genuinely do not leave, and a sofa bed for a third guest. The best light in the building, from about seven in the morning.
It is the top floor, which means three flights of stairs and no lift — worth knowing before you arrive with a heavy case. In exchange you get the only freestanding bath in the building, the best light in it, and a 13:00 checkout.
- Full-height city window
- Sofa bed for a third guest
- Freestanding bath
- Late 13:00 checkout
Best for a longer stay, a third guest on the sofa bed, or a slow Sunday you would rather not end at eleven in the morning.
Check dates for The Loft SuiteIn every rate
What is included when you stay with us
No resort fee, no charge for breakfast, no surcharge for oat milk and no minibar priced like a mistake. Six things come with every room, whichever of the three you book.
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Breakfast at the bar
Pastry or a cooked plate plus any drink from the espresso bar, served downstairs between 7:00 and 10:30.
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Coffee in the room
A 250g bag of the current house roast, a hand grinder and a brewer, restocked for every stay.
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A proper bed
Hungarian goose-down alternative duvets, 400-thread cotton, and blackout curtains on every window.
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24-hour access
Your own street door and key code, so late trains and early flights are never a problem.
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Fast, boring Wi-Fi
500 Mbps throughout the building, plus a desk in every room and sockets on both sides of the bed.
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Guest cupping table
Join the Saturday 9am tasting free of charge — five coffees, no jargon, no obligation to like any of them.
Guests order from the same list as everyone else — the all-day kitchen section of the menu is what the pass is sending out today.
Booking & check-in
How to book a room at ConnectionCafe.com
Email or phone — we take the bookings ourselves
There is no booking engine on ConnectionCafe.com, because with eight rooms a person answers faster than a form. Email stay@connectionscafes.com with your dates, the room you want and how many of you there are, or call +44 20 7946 0958 during opening hours. We reply to every enquiry within one working day and usually the same morning. Booking direct also means we can put a light sleeper in a rear room or move you into the Loft Suite if it frees up, which a third-party site cannot do.
Deposit and cancellation
We take one night’s rate as a deposit to hold the room, with the balance settled on departure. Cancel up to 48 hours before arrival and the deposit comes back in full — no questions, no admin fee. Cancel inside 48 hours, or simply not arrive, and we charge the first night: with eight rooms, a late cancellation is a room that stays empty. If your travel falls apart for a reason worth explaining, tell us. We are human about it more often than not.
Check-in, checkout and late trains
Check-in is from 15:00 and checkout is 11:00, except in the Loft Suite where you have until 13:00. Arriving early is no problem: leave your bags at the bar, take the first coffee on us and go out for the afternoon. Arriving at two in the morning is also no problem — the street door works on your key code, reception is staffed 24 hours, and nobody will make you feel like a nuisance for catching the last train.
House rules, kept short
Quiet hours on the guest floors run from 22:00. There are no single-use plastics anywhere in the building: refillable amenities, glass carafes, no wrapped cups. That occasionally means a shampoo bottle less glamorous than the one in a chain hotel, which we can live with. The whole building is non-smoking. And if you want all eight rooms plus the bar for a weekend, a wedding party or a company offsite, we do whole-building hire — email the same address and ask for the buyout rate.
The neighbourhood
Getting here, and what is worth walking to
Kiln Street sits between Shoreditch High Street and Liverpool Street, which puts most of the City and the East End within a walk or one short ride.
- Shoreditch High Street station Overground, 6 minutes on foot
- Liverpool Street station Elizabeth line and mainline, 10 minutes
- Redchurch Street Independent shops, about 5 minutes
- Old Spitalfields Market Lunch and traders, about 9 minutes
- Brick Lane Bagels and curry houses, about 8 minutes
- Columbia Road flower market Sundays only, about 15 minutes
Shoreditch High Street is six minutes on foot and puts you on the Overground. Liverpool Street is ten, and gives you the Elizabeth line, the Central and Circle lines and mainline services towards Stansted and East Anglia. Contactless works on all of it. It is worth checking live running before you set off: Transport for London has the honest version of weekend engineering works, and National Rail covers the longer journeys. From Heathrow, the Elizabeth line into Liverpool Street beats a taxi on both time and money at almost any hour.
As for the area itself: Redchurch Street is five minutes away and has the independent shops worth your time. Old Spitalfields Market makes a better lunch than a dinner. Brick Lane is eight minutes and genuinely good if you know which door to open, which is the sort of thing to ask a barista rather than a search engine — we eat around here every day and we will tell you where we actually go. On Sundays, Columbia Road flower market is a fifteen-minute walk and best before ten, while it is still a market rather than a queue. Friday and Saturday nights on the high street get loud after nine, so if you want a quiet dinner, walk east. More about the neighbourhood and the people behind the bar is on our story so far, and the ConnectionCafe.com journal is where we write up brewing notes, new arrivals and what is changing on the menu.
Before you book
Guest questions, answered before you ask
Parking, luggage, stairs and breakfast — the six things guests email us about most, with straight answers.
Is there parking at ConnectionCafe.com?
No — we have no spaces at all, and we would rather say so now than at check-in. Kiln Street is permit-only, the nearest multi-storey car parks are a ten-minute walk away and charge by the hour, and the whole area sits inside both the Congestion Charge zone and the ULEZ, so driving in costs money before you have even parked. Almost every guest arrives by train or Tube. If you must bring a car, tell us when you book and we will talk you through the realistic options.
Can I leave luggage before check-in or after checkout?
Yes, and there is no charge for it. We keep a locked cupboard behind the bar for bags on the day you arrive and the day you leave, so you can drop a case at nine in the morning, spend the day in the city and collect it later. We cannot store bags overnight or between stays, and we ask you to keep laptops, passports and anything valuable with you rather than in the cupboard.
Are children welcome in the rooms?
They are. The Loft Suite sleeps two adults plus a third guest on the sofa bed and is much the most practical room for a family, because there is space to spread out. We keep one travel cot, so please ask for it when you book rather than on the day. There is no separate children’s menu in the cafe, but the kitchen will happily do a plain plate, a half portion or a warm milk without making anything of it.
Do you allow dogs?
Well-behaved dogs are very welcome in the coffee bar downstairs — there is water by the door and biscuits behind the counter — but not in the guest rooms. With eight rooms and one set of bedding each, we cannot promise the next guest a properly dander-free room, and some of them ask for exactly that. Assistance dogs are the exception and are welcome throughout the building, rooms included.
Is the guest house accessible, and is there a lift?
There is no lift, and we will not pretend otherwise. The building is Victorian: the rooms are on the first and second floors up a narrow staircase with a turn in it, and the Loft Suite is three flights up. That makes the rooms unsuitable for wheelchair users and hard work for anyone with limited mobility. The coffee bar at street level is a different matter — one shallow threshold step, wide aisles between the 62 seats, and staff who will get the door for you.
What time is breakfast, and is it really included?
It is genuinely included, not a voucher for a pastry. Breakfast is served at the bar from 7:00 on weekdays and 8:00 at weekends, through until 10:30, and it is a pastry or a cooked plate plus any drink on the espresso list — including the ones people expect to pay extra for. If you have an early train, tell reception the night before and we will have coffee and something to carry waiting at the counter.
Stay with us
Wake up above the roastery
Eight rooms, three shapes, and one very good reason to come downstairs in the morning. Send us your dates and we will hold a room for 24 hours.