How Gaggia sparked the start of the coffee revolution in the UK 75 years ago

How Gaggia sparked the start of the coffee revolution in the UK 75 years ago

​It’s a major milestone in the Gaggia story and intrinsically linked with a legendary part of one of London’s best-known districts.

This year, 2025, marks 75 years since Gaggia coffee machines were first sold in the UK and Soho quickly became synonymous with the new taste that started to replace centuries of tea drinking.

In 1950 people’s experience of coffee was limited to instant granules – a far cry from the range and quality you can get today.

So the taste of freshly brewed coffee from the latest high technology café coffee machines imported from Milan in Italy blew their tastebuds as well as their minds.

Soho is in the heart of London’s West End surrounded by theatre, arts, culture, fashion, free-thinking … everything that fired Britons’ imaginations in the coming years as they started to move away from the austerity forced on them by the Second World War and its aftermath.

People sought an escape, a new beginning and coffee absolutely defined this – a spectacular taste dispensed from sleek, stylish espresso coffee machines accompanied by the telltale hiss of steam and the clatter of porcelain cups.

The centre of attention became the Gaggia machines in coffee bars such as Bar Italia in Frith Street which served the British public with something they’d never seen before - espresso topped with a golden layer of crema. Bar Italia has since become one of the world’s best known cafes yet still only uses Gaggia coffee machines.

Gaggia had transformed drinking coffee into a true experience verging on performance art - dramatic, aromatic and utterly continental. Word spread quickly and Gaggia machines quickly became the centrepiece of Soho’s growing network of coffee bars, each one buzzing with music, conversation and energy.

Everything about the coffee bars was new and exciting with bright, modern décor and jukeboxes playing the latest hits along with Italian waiters adding to the authenticity of the experience.

Students, actors and musicians flocked to these bars which became meeting places for creatives, rebels and romantics — a scene so dynamic that the Daily Mirror dubbed it “the espresso revolution.”

Just as the West End theatres a short walk away entertained audiences with dazzling performances, the Soho coffee bar offered its own kind of artistry. The barista was the performer, the machine his instrument and the espresso hiss his applause.

By the late 1950s London boasted hundreds of coffee bars and Gaggia machines were at the heart of many of them such as The 2i’s Coffee Bar where future rock ’n’ roll stars such as Cliff Richard, Hank Marvin and Tommy Steele played in the basement with the likes of Diana Dors, Michael Caine and Terence Stamp among its clientele.

Then there were the stylish hangouts like The Moka Coffee Bar founded in 1953 by Italian actress Gina Lollobrigida at 29 Frith Street. 

By then the espresso bar had become a symbol of freedom and modernity.

This was coffee as culture, as lifestyle — and Gaggia was right there, shaping Britain’s first taste of it.
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And Gaggia remains at the heart of this lasting legacy with hundreds of thousands of Gaggia coffee machines now in people’s homes throughout the UK. making Gaggia as relevant and brand-leading today as it was back then.