Black Sheep Coffee has reported its first positive EBITDA, around $1 million for its last financial year, after 12 years of annual losses, according to MCA Insight. Co-founder Gabriel Shohet said the figure is forecast to rise in FY26, while the coffee chain keeps signing franchise partners across the UK and Ireland.
Shohet shared the result after the business filed its accounts for FY25, MCA reported on 19 October 2026. Propel’s Premium Club diary added that the chain was founded in 2013 with Eirik Holth and now runs more than 130 stores across the UK, the US and the Middle East, placing it among the larger coffee franchises in the UK. Shohet pointed to Brexit, Covid, inflation and recessionary pressures, alongside continued investment in expansion, as the obstacles the business has worked through.
What the figure does and does not show
EBITDA is earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, so a positive figure is not the same as a pre-tax profit. MCA gives the amount as around $1 million, in the currency it printed, and the accounts themselves are not quoted in either report. Neither publishes turnover, store-level results or like-for-like sales for FY25, so the figure cannot be set against the size of the estate.
Shohet said levels are forecast to rise in FY26, which is a forecast and not a result. A first positive EBITDA after 12 years of losses is notable, but the reports leave the scale of the earlier losses unquantified beyond “million pounds” a year, so the size of the turnaround cannot be calculated from what has been published. Readers comparing it with other coffee chains should note that the currency is dollars in MCA’s report, while most UK trade coverage quotes sterling.
Franchise partners across the UK and Ireland
On 15 October 2026, four days before the EBITDA disclosure, a Propel headline reported that Black Sheep had signed three new territory agreements, leaving only five territories remaining in the UK and Ireland. In March 2025 Shohet told MCA that the business had seen ‘tremendous traction’ in UK franchise development and expected to have franchisees in place in each UK territory before the end of FY2025. Propel’s diary also noted that the company recently opened its first UK drive-thru, in Blackburn.
What to watch next
The accounts filed for FY25 are the primary record, and the figures to look for in them are turnover, the split between company-owned and franchised stores, and the cost lines behind the EBITDA. Black Sheep has not published that split in the sources reviewed for this report.
The other marker is whether FY26 delivers the rise Shohet forecast, and how many of the five remaining UK and Ireland territories are signed before then. Black Sheep’s earlier statements give a sense of the pace: in March 2025 the company expected franchisees in every UK territory within the year, and by 15 October 2026 Propel was still counting five territories as unsigned. Reading those two dates together, the timetable has moved, though neither source explains why, and neither names the remaining territories.
