Black Sheep Coffee opened its first UK drive-thru this week, a new format at Townsmoor Retail Park in Blackburn built and run by a Lancashire-based franchise team. The site is the coffee chain’s second in the county after a Lancaster opening earlier in 2026, with two more Lancashire locations already lined up for late 2026 and early 2027.
The Blackburn drive-thru sits at Townsmoor Retail Park on Great Bolton Street, close to a Next store, and serves the brand’s full menu of speciality coffee, matcha drinks, smoothies, pastries and cakes to takeaway. Black Sheep Coffee was founded in London in 2013 by Gabriel Shohet and Eirik Holth, and has expanded mainly through franchising since its early years, passing 100 UK stores in August 2025. The Blackburn opening follows the brand’s first Lancashire site, in Lancaster, which opened earlier this year.
A second Lancashire site, and a first for the format
The Blackburn branch opened later in the week beginning 1 September 2026, and is Black Sheep Coffee’s first drive-thru anywhere in the UK. “Opening Black Sheep Coffee’s first UK drive-thru in Blackburn is a huge milestone for the team,” the Lancashire-based franchise team said. “We opened our first Lancashire site in Lancaster just a few months ago, so to follow this with a completely new format demonstrates our commitment to Black Sheep Coffee,” the team added, saying it was “incredibly excited to welcome our first customers to Blackburn in September”.
Franchise partners driving the Lancashire push
Black Sheep Coffee grows almost entirely through multi-unit franchise agreements, under which a franchise partner commits to open a set number of stores across a defined territory, part of how much it costs to open a franchise with the brand. Speaking last year after a similar agreement covering Surrey, co-founder Eirik Holth said the network was seeing strong momentum, adding that territories were “filling fast” and demand was “at an all-time high”.
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Black Sheep Coffee expands mainly through multi-unit development agreements, under which one franchise partner takes on a whole territory and a minimum store count, rather than through single-site franchise deals.
Part of a wider UK drive-thru trend
The Blackburn opening places Black Sheep Coffee alongside other UK chains moving into the drive-thru format. Pret A Manger’s UK success story includes opening its first UK drive-thru in 2025, and Chick-fil-A opened its first UK drive-thru near Glasgow in 2026 as part of a wider growth push. Drive-thru sites typically let an operator serve a wider catchment from a retail park location than a high street unit can reach, without the same city-centre rent.
More Lancashire sites in the pipeline
The same Lancashire franchise team already has two further sites planned, due in late 2026 and early 2027, extending the county’s Black Sheep Coffee presence beyond Lancaster and Blackburn. The brand has not published a current UK store count more recent than the 100 stores reported in August 2025, though its expansion has continued through further territory deals since. Whether the Blackburn drive-thru format is repeated elsewhere in the network is not yet stated by the brand.
