Since 2015 Cars and Coffee Cheshire has been bringing people together via their shared love of cars. Co founder Dave Brown: “It started off as a throwaway idea, having coffee one morning with an old school friend. There was 6 or 7 of us on Chester castle carpark and its grown into what it is today at Chester Lakes with 4-500 people turning up in cars and a couple more hundred coming to watch. We are trying to make a community, something people can get involved with and talk about, without the pretentiousness.”
C & C have made some recent changes to their event. ” People may have noticed we have a ticketing system in place, its free and it will never be an event we charge for . Ticketing gives people a buy in, people feel a part of it and they feel involved, and it also massively reduces the anti social behaviour that has been at quite a few a car events historically. Even this year there has been issues in Chester at another event. We had three events last year and the average attendance was 500 people, I had to speak to one person! ” Ticketing also helps the caterers plan for demand.
Despite taking a non corporate approach to managing the event, Cars and Coffee now have a number of corporate partners, with the intention of cross supporting the local business community. The partners include SJB Classic Cars, Cat n Mouse print, Finer Details and Takona, a clothing brand raising awareness for men’s mental health in the car community. An official photographer has also been appointed, @Shitchester founder Jennie Harper, who commented “I love being part of Cars and Coffee Cheshire and captutring the authenticity that exudes from every meet”
“A big thing that we’re going to be doing more of this year is work with charities. ” says Dave. ” We invited Share to a couple of events last year, I’ve spoken to their new chair and we’ve had a really good conversation. Particularly, their support for refugees is going to be very prominent now. Anything we can do to help will be fantastic and they’re going to be attending with a tent and volunteers on site. We are going to be promoting their buy a brick campaign , its important for us to give something back. ”
After 7 years Dave says that the highlight has been, “the amount of people turning up, from Shrewsbury, Telford, Manchester etc. Its all been done from word of mouth, we haven’t done any paid advertising, We had Sarah Crabtree from TV’s Bangers and Cash turn up, just from reputation. The growth from 7 of us standing in a freezing car park to 5-600 people in a field has been great to see. Everyone involved has been great, its a team effort! We want to carry on growing this event and make it something for local people to be proud of.”
The event takes place on the second Sunday of the month apart from August as it clashes with DevaFest Next 3 dates : March 13th, April 10th, May 8th
The Chester blog 