Hello from Greg & Kate at KIN Coffee!

We lived in London for a number of years, where we spent our weekends touring the city’s vibrant coffee scene on our beloved retro Ducati. Covid happened! We moved back down to Kent, the Garden of England, with our kin (family) and found a distinct lack of speciality coffee in the local area. We decided to see if we could shake things up a bit by converting an old horse trailer to turn into a coffee bar, but (after a considerable amount of work) this project was halted by the discovery of a nest of Robins living in the wheel arch, which we did not want to disturb. This later came to be incorporated into our logo with a bird drinking a cup of coffee and this little family of robins was partly the reason we chose Kin as our brand name, as well as the huge amount of support from our own human families.

With a forced break in play, we had time to re-assess what we were passionate about, which was ethically sourced freshly roasted coffee… So, we decided to tackle this at the most fundamental level by taking a punt : refurbishing the old potting shed in the garden, taking out a start-up loan and buying a coffee roaster!
 
We started at farmers markets, whilst our online sales and 5-start reviews grew, we added a roast-to-post subscription service and also started supplying wholesale for the first time to local coffee shops.

Running parallel to the growth of our little roastery, was a fight against “wish-cycling” due to almost all coffee packaging being non-recyclable in domestic bins, so we became the first UK roastery to package freshly roasted coffee into glass packaging (with a special valve sourced from the States), which earned us a feature in The Times newspaper as a “game changing” coffee brand.
 
We were very lucky to be introduced to Cal’s Coffee early doors, who has been supplying us with a wonderful coffee directly from his family farm Fazenda Bom Jesus in Brazil (which we recently visited) alongside some amazing options from Falcon Specialty in Lewes, East Sussex. We quickly found that the coffees that jumped off the cupping table for us were always naturally processed and often from Latin America, coupled with our extensive travels to this part of the world, our love for the culture/style and also the realisation that naturals tended to be more environmentally friendly, we decided to follow our passion and focus solely on this micro-niche.
 
Our most recent endeavour has been the formulation of The Kin Coffee Shop in Staplehurst. We serve espresso-based speciality coffees with a selection of origins/roasts and a filter batch brew, alongside a menu of locally sourced baked goods, fresh bagels and sourdough. We have also recently acquired an alcohol premises license and are starting taco and cocktail nights every Friday, after a recent trip to Tulum, Mexico. Vamos!