Robins, a Potting Shed and the Old Post Office: The Story Behind Staplehurst's Kin Coffee

Staplehurst's Kin Coffee describes itself, on its own Facebook page, as a "multi award-winning coffee shop and roastery" - and the story of how it got there starts with a nest of robins that refused to move.

By its own account, founders Greg and Kate moved back to Kent from London during Covid, bringing with them a love of the capital's coffee scene and a gap they'd spotted in their new local area: not much decent speciality coffee nearby. Their first fix was to convert an old horse trailer into a mobile coffee bar - until the build was stopped by a nest of robins that had moved into the wheel arch, which they didn't want to disturb. The robins ended up shaping the business anyway: a bird drinking a cup of coffee became the logo, and the family of robins was part of the reason they settled on the name Kin.

With the trailer shelved, Greg and Kate refurbished an old potting shed in their garden, took out a start-up loan and bought a coffee roaster, starting out selling at farmers' markets before adding a roast-to-post subscription and wholesale supply to local coffee shops. Looking for a way around the fact that most coffee packaging can't be recycled at home, they say they became the first UK roastery to package freshly roasted coffee in glass, with a specialist valve sourced from the US - work they say earned them a feature in The Times as a "game changing" coffee brand. Their beans are naturally processed and sourced mainly from Latin America, including coffee bought directly from a family farm in Brazil that they've since visited themselves.

"Nearly two years after opening the roastery," as Kin Coffee puts it, Greg and Kate opened an actual shop: a small unit at 3 Milestone Buildings on Staplehurst High Street - the address the Post Office itself once listed as the village's Post Office branch, before it relocated to the Spar on The Parade. The old Post Office sign is still up on the wall inside. The menu leans on other small Kent producers - pastries from Taywells in Goudhurst, milk from Hinxden Dairy as an alternative to the usual options, sourdough toasties and locally baked cakes and traybakes - alongside the espresso and filter coffee. It picked up the Café category at the Muddy Stilettos Kent Awards 2026, part of what the business now bills itself as a "multi award-winning" operation.

The shop marked its fourth birthday at the start of October, alongside "5 years, 5 months, 5 days and counting" for the roastery side of the business. Recent months have brought a run of evening events with Obà's Kitchen Truck, a Kin Coffee merchandise line, and - after the owners picked up a premises licence and a trip to Tulum, Mexico - the launch of taco and cocktail nights every Friday. For a shop that started out not much bigger than a garden shed, it's a lot of ground covered.

Source: Kin Coffee, Muddy Stilettos Kent Awards 2026