Meet Coffee Kev, Cheshire’s most successful coffee blogger

Coffee Kev: nickname or job title? For Poynton’s Kevin Lewis, the previous grew to become the latter when his passion became a complete new profession 

‘For me, coffee was at all times a whole passion,’ says Kevin Lewis, founding father of coffeeblog.co.uk, the place he has a yearly readership of 1.2 million individuals, and host of Coffee Kev, on YouTube, the place he has over nearly 11,000 subscribers and greater than 1.6m views on his common coffee machine critiques. 

Now he is working with Brickoven, Kevin can put together and movie as much as 4 YouTube movies in someday, hopefully giving him his weekends again, although spouse Lisa stays sceptical
– Credit: Brickoven Media

‘I’ve at all times been into coffee, since I used to be a bit child. I grew up in Macclesfield, subsequent to Leadbeaters Canal, and the reservoir was behind the home; I used to go on fishing journeys, from about 10 years outdated, and I’d pack a flask of coffee and I feel that’s the place the coffee factor got here from. It was at all times instantaneous, after all, it was solely in my 20s that I began moving into freshly brewed coffee. ‘In 2015 I used to be simply beginning to attempt various kinds of floor coffee, and Lisa, my spouse, gave me a brand new cafetiere for my birthday, which is after I obtained into the house brewster passion.’ Brewster? Are we nonetheless speaking coffee? 
‘It’s a time period for these getting actually nerdy about coffee,’ Kevin smiles. ‘Getting into residence espresso machines and speciality coffees. There’re in all probability extra forms of coffee than there are wine – there origins, and varieties, and processes, there’s loads to it. There’s a phrase: “happening the house brewster rabbit gap”, since you don’t realise how a lot there’s to it.’ 

The transfer to Alderley Edge was pushed by the necessity for a silent filming location
– Credit: Brickoven Media

It was the efficiency of the cafetiere that despatched Kevin much more deeply down the rabbit gap. 

‘I used to be writing a evaluation of the cafetiere on Amazon, and I ended up with this huge evaluation and thought, what am I doing, placing this on Amazon after I can create my very own weblog and make this my first weblog submit?’ It’s not the very first thing most individuals consider when writing an Amazon evaluation, to be truthful, however Kevin’s skilled function as a advertising and marketing supervisor, and so understanding of on-line advertising and marketing and search engine optimisation, maybe had one thing to do with that. ‘I had no different passion,’ he says, ‘so it simply went from there. I by no means thought it could ever be greater than a passion, although. I used to be conscious of internet affiliate marketing and partnering with manufacturers via Amazon, however I at all times noticed it as only a bit of additional earnings, a sideline, if something, I by no means thought-about it may find yourself being my job.’ 

The partitions in Kevin’s Alderley Edge studio might seem like brickwork, however are actually wallpaper murals created by his outdated print agency employers, Meshtex, in Poynton
– Credit: Brickoven Media

As for a lot of, it was the pandemic, and the change in working circumstances, that pushed Coffee Kev’s side-hustle to the subsequent stage. ‘It was the right storm, every little thing occurred on the similar time.  Google did an algorithm replace, which levelled the enjoying area between particular person bloggers like myself, individuals clearly educated and passionate in regards to the topic, and the massive manufacturers reminiscent of Good Housekeeping. So whereas I used to be often sitting on web page two in Google search and all the large guys on web page one, that modified in a short time. Also, there’s a snowball impact, in running a blog. Every piece of content material you write is a spinning plate – when it’s on-line each submit you set up there’s at all times accessible and may at all times be discovered and skim. I positively benefitted from the snowball impact, with an increasing number of content material on my web site. At the identical time tons and plenty extra individuals have been coffee machines to make use of at residence, Googling ‘greatest coffee machine for…’, and so on, and out of the blue I used to be prime of web page one.’ It’s truthful to say Covid and Google united in Kevin’s favour, creating an viewers and giving that viewers entry to his experience, however it’s his capacity to carry that viewers that has cemented his success. 

Working with knowledgeable manufacturing firm takes strain from Kevin’s time
– Credit: Brickoven Media

‘The method I write, and the content material I had already developed, implies that individuals, as soon as they land on my web site, keep there for some time, which demonstrates to Google that when individuals discover my web site, they’ve discovered what they’re on the lookout for. There’s no click on bait, none of my critiques are sponsored, so as soon as they arrive, they keep to be taught and make a shopping for determination.’ In March 2020, through the first lockdown, Kevin launched his YouTube channel, posting one video every week. There is a few crossover between his weblog and his YouTube audiences, however on the entire they separate into those that wish to learn, and those that favor to look at, doubling his attain. ‘It’s similar to my weblog,’ he says, ‘and there’s often some crossover, however I do see them as two separate issues.’  As properly as critiques, Kevin does the all-important ‘’ movies, a godsend to these of us who can’t keep in mind, or who’ve by no means realized, do something from fundamental DIY to altering a battery in a key fob. 

Brewsters are a rising tribe, giving Kevin the chance to develop a passion right into a enterprise
– Credit: Brickoven Media

‘The highest seen video of mine in the meanwhile is clear a specific Sage coffee machine, with over 100,000 views.’  It is his growing following that triggered Kevin’s transfer to a tiny studio in Alderley Edge, the place a day on the workplace is accompanied by nothing greater than the sound of birdsong, his coffee machine doing its factor and his spouse, Lisa, who gave up her job as a educating assistant in January this yr to handle Kevin’s admin and assist reply to the various emails he will get from subscribers day by day. Having determined working from his Poynton residence was unimaginable, and an workplace rental in Cheadle too impacted by the sound of planes going over, an area in a transformed farm constructing in Alderley Edge supplies all he wants, now he has lastly taken the leap to take Coffee Kev from passion to full time profession, working Brickoven, a professional manufacturing group based mostly at Media City. ‘In August 2020 I realised my earnings was out of the blue enough to go full-time,’ he says, even now with some extent of shock. ‘But I wasn’t certain if it was simply due to lockdown and the sudden surge in coffee machine buying. By February 2021 we’d determined it wasn’t only a flash within the pan and I handed my discover in. Even then I used to be involved – was all of it Covid-related, would it not all ebb away as life returned to regular? But it’s not modified, residence coffee is on the map.’ While Kevin might not evaluation coffees, he has launched his personal assortment of floor coffees for coffee lovers. 

No extra every day grind. Oh, wait…
– Credit: Brickoven Media

‘The Coffee Works has been a private undertaking and has been achieved via analysis with my subscribers each time I had a call to make; I did a sequence of polls on every little thing from what sort of luggage I ought to use to what tastes individuals wished – from chocolate and caramel notes to zesty and floral.’ Kevin’s coffee web site is sort of the revelation – who knew coffees could possibly be described in such phrases? But then, if wine might be given tasting notes from leather-based to honeysuckle, why not coffee? And like wine, there’s a historical past and an artwork to the rising, roasting, grinding and brewing of coffee beans (which aren’t even beans, however seeds, I be taught) that may produce a myriad of differing outcomes. ‘I work with a small, unbiased coffee roaster and spent loads of time with them discovering the beans that might give my clients the flavours they stated they wished within the polls. There are 16 within the vary, from Cacao Uganda – actually highly effective, like a smack within the mouth, nearly like a spoonful of unsweetened cocoa – to at least one we name a Fruitcake Blend, which is spicy and earthy and gentler, extra rounded.’ Chatting with Kevin, over a his personal fairly scrumptious Choc & Nut coffee, is simply fascinating; an eye-opener to our historical past with coffee, the huge trade behind getting the hundreds of thousands of jars of instantaneous to our grocery store cabinets, and the gentler, extra customer-focussed aspect of the enterprise, with unbiased growers, roasters, and retailers producing one thing individuals wish to speak about, over a coffee, after all – to not point out the brewsters and bloggers bringing enlightenment to us all. I’m now hooked – not on caffeine, however on coffee, and all that comes with it. Follow Kevin on coffeeblog.co.uk, and uncover his coffees at cworks.co.uk 

https://www.greatbritishlife.co.uk/people/local-businesses/coffee-kev-the-cheshire-brewster-9275826

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