Be like Kev. Not Gwyneth.
I'm Kev. I run Kombucha Club and the taproom in Otley. Here's how a public health bloke ended up with the UK's biggest kombucha fridge.
20+ years in marketing. Ten of them changing habits.
I've spent over twenty years in marketing, and the first ten of them on the front line of public health, starting at the NHS in London and moving on to lead national behaviour change campaigns for the Department of Health.
My job was to be the translator: take government strategy and make it actually change lives in places like Brixton, Lambeth, Portsmouth and Liverpool.
Turns out the trick isn't willpower. It's making the good choice the easy one.
From Millwall FC to the Asda aisles.
Stop While You Shop: weekly clinics inside Asda supermarkets in London's most deprived wards, catching the habit at the exact point of purchase.
Millwall FC: taking the health message into the heart of the community, through the football people actually cared about.
Illegal tobacco: million-pound operations with Trading Standards, HMRC and social care. It worked so well in Portsmouth and Liverpool that Robert West, the godfather of behaviour change, came to see how we'd brought his theories to life on the streets.
I was a big wine drinker.
Not a disaster. Just a bottle here, a bottle there, and a lot of foggy Saturdays.
I swapped the wine for a small glass of raw kombucha every day. Cut down first. Then cut it out.
More energy. The bloating cleared off. Better skin, apparently. I'll take it.
"Why wait for your health to fail before you start valuing it?"
I'm 46. My daughter's 8. I want to keep up with her in my 70s. That's the whole plan. No stack. No app. Just fit enough to be daft with her.
Proactive over reactive.
I spent years watching a system that's brilliant at catching people when they fall, and rubbish at stopping the fall. So I've moved the safety net upstream, and it starts in the gut.
Environment over willpower. Just like the NHS work, if you change what's in the fridge, you change what you reach for. 60+ raw kombuchas from the UK's best makers, plus the basics, online and in the fridge at the Otley taproom, so the healthy choice is the easy one.
I'm still a campaigner. But instead of helping you stop, I'm inviting you to begin.
Welcome to the club.
Two shops. One taproom. Same bloke.
Look after your gut. Cover the basics. Then optimise for fun.
- 1The gutRaw kombucha, most days. Kev's daily habit since he swapped out the wine.
- 2The basicsOlive oil, fibre, creatine. Boring. Brilliant. No 20-supplement stack.
- 3The funEverything after that is diminishing returns. Go and enjoy yourself.
Show me the science
- Your gut's trillions of microbes are linked to heart health, blood sugar, inflammation and weight. ZOE's scientists studied over 34,000 guts and found 50 bacteria linked to better health.
- In a Stanford trial, ten weeks of having more fermented stuff every day boosted gut diversity and cut 19 markers of inflammation.
- Around 7,000 steps a day was linked to a 47% lower risk of death from any cause compared with 2,000 steps, with modest extra gains beyond that.
- Benefits from exercise level off at roughly three to five times the NHS minimum.
Sources: ZOE Microbiome Health Ranking (Nature, 2025), Wastyk et al. (Cell, 2021), Lancet Public Health 2025 steps review, JAMA Internal Medicine 2015 dose-response study, NHS physical activity guidelines.