Coming to Hockley This Autumn, We Hear More About the Nottingham Coffee Festival

Coffee. It wakes us up in the morning, it gets us through long afternoon meetings and it makes us feel very sophisticated when drunk in espresso form. In short, we love it. And though known for being a tea nation, Britain has a long history with coffee too, with the first coffee shop opening in Oxford in 1650, run by a Lebanese Jewish entrepreneur called Jacob. Nowadays there are over 25,000 coffee shops in the UK, and a fair few brilliant ones in Nottingham alone. Think 200 Degrees, Blend, Cartwheel, Yolk and Stewarts to name a few. But why is coffee culture so popular? And why does our city have such a strong artisan scene? 

That’s the question on my lips as I talk to Josh Eaton from the Nottingham Coffee Festival, the event that will be debuting for the first time this October, and which he and his friend Matt Vassey are pioneering together. “I think that we have such an amazing coffee community in Nottingham that’s grown astoundingly over the past few years,” Josh says, “and people want to support independent coffee shops and business owners - especially off the back of the pandemic, so many people have embraced shopping locally.”

Spotting this growing niche, Josh and Matt decided to set up the festival, which will be taking place at St Mary’s Church. “I went down to the London Coffee Festival a couple of years ago as a customer,” Josh reveals. “It was a great event and from there Matt and I started chatting about how there isn’t much in the Midlands when it comes to a big event for the coffee scene - which is weird because it’s a growing community. So that’s how the festival was born. It’s exciting because it’s long overdue, a lot of the vendors said the same when we asked them to be involved - that they hadn’t been a part of a major event to celebrate Nottingham’s coffee culture.

“It will be really exciting to see all these vendors under one roof,” Josh continues, explaining that the ethos of the Nottingham Coffee Festival is to be accessible to both coffee experts and the average layman who simply enjoys a good cup of joe. He explains that the London Coffee Festival was a bit overwhelming in terms of its reliance on coffee knowledge, and that you could easily become disorientated, hence why it’s vital to him to make the NCF as open as possible. “We've said to our vendors that we want them to be inventive with their stands, rather than just serving coffee. That way the everyday person can come down and learn a bit more about coffee - like the difference between an espresso and an aeropress, for example. So far the vendors are all really excited about this idea, with the likes of Stewarts looking at doing a pourover session, and another proposing a latte art tutorial and competition.”

Also aiming to make the festival as approachable as possible for independent coffee shops, Josh and Matt will be setting up a ‘community bar’ at the festival which consists of a coffee machine and grinder that smaller businesses can jump onto for an hour - meaning those that wouldn’t be able to spare staff for the whole day can still come along. Josh assures me that they want as many locals there as possible, serving up a whole variety of coffees, food and experiences. 

It is, of course, impossible to talk about the burgeoning coffee scene in Nottingham without mentioning 200 Degrees, who first appeared in the city centre in 2012 and have since expanded to eleven other cities - becoming known as the gold standard for a top brew around here and beyond. Among all of the Nottingham coffee independents, it would be fair to say that 200 Degrees have led the way in terms of success, and that’s why it’s so exciting for Josh and Matt that they’ve banked them as one of the partners on this event, with Josh describing them as great to work with. “I can’t thank them enough for their support and some of the ideas they’ve thrown together with us,” he says. “It was after speaking with 200 Degrees that we felt we were doing the right thing and it was really their support that pushed us to make this happen.

“The main thing that we want is for locals to celebrate what they have and what they’re about. And we’re super excited to get this going. We don’t just want it to be a one-year event, but rather it’s something that we want to grow. I’m sure there’s stuff that we’re going to learn from the first year that can be put into the next. But in the meantime, there’s going to be coffee, there’s going to be music, there’s going to be food - so come along!”

Nottingham Coffee Festival is taking place on Saturday 22 October at St Mary’s Church

@nottscoffeefestival