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!
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.
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.
