IWCA Celebrates 15 Years
By MARIA HILL Every year the international coffee community comes together at the Specialty Coffee Expo. This event brings together professionals from every step of the coffee supply chain to discuss, learn, and make new contacts. 2018 marks a significant milestone for IWCA as we celebrate the organization’s 15th anniversary. As a global network, IWCA …
30 Years of Expo
By DONALD SCHOENHOLT This year marks the 30th specialty coffee conference put on by the association. For perspective on the earliest gatherings, we turned to Donald Schoenholt, who was the first president of the Specialty Coffee Association of America, and instrumental in the early growth of the specialty association and industry. He runs Gillies Coffee …
Recap: Bloom Providence
By TODD MACKEY Established in 2016, and since its inception hosted in Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Francisco, Bloom was created by the BGA to bring together some of the best minds in coffee. The event aims to ignite a national conversation while illuminating the ideas that emerge. Attendees listen, ponder, and respond to thought-leaders …
A Collaborative Approach to Improve Farmworkers Well-Being in Colombia
By ANGELA PELAEZ My journey through the labor issue started long time ago when I was a young woman helping my father in our coffee farm. During that time workers’ scarcity was not a big issue but poverty, invisibility and vulnerability have been a permanent menace for farmworkers. Decades later I had the fortune to …
Re:co Fellow Spotlight: Implementing Drone Technology in Coffee Farming
By LYELA MUTSIYA As a coffee farmers daughter I understand the challenges my father faces and it is important for me to do something about it. In 2017 I established Kenspeco (short for Kenya Specialty Coffee) a coffee exporting and farm management company. I opened this company with one goal in mind, to eradicate poverty …
2018 SCA Sustainability Award Winners Announced at Re:co Symposium
The 2018 SCA Sustainability Award winners, Manos al Agua and Twin UK, were recognized on the Re:co Symposium stage this Thursday, April 19th. The awards, created in 2004, recognize outstanding work in the field of sustainability in the coffee industry. Manos al Agua, a program of the National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia (FNC), …
The History of Proposition 65, Law That May Require Coffee to Carry a Cancer Warning Label
By RIC RHINEHART In the face of an ongoing stream of rigorous studies demonstrating the healthy aspects of coffee consumption, the recent decision by IARC to reclassify coffee as not carcinogenic, and the promising work suggesting that coffee has anti-carcinogenic properties, this news has been hard to understand. When the news of the court ruling …
Join The Unified Coffee Roasters Guild For Their First Meeting & Mixer At Expo
By JOE MARROCCO The Roasters Guild and the Roaster Guild of Europe are now the Coffee Roasters Guild (CRG). After months of work and meetings behind the scenes, the RG and RGE leadership groups are ready and excited to bring together the members of both guilds into one collaborative community of professional roasters. As one …
Meet Access, the New Barista Guild Event
By MARK HUNDLEY Through education and certifications, the Barista Guild of America (BGA) has been committed to helping baristas find their places within the coffee industry. We’ve focused on Barista Camps and have strived to continually keep offering the SCA certification program at its highest level while finding new elements to add to each camp …
Get To Know 2018 Portrait Country China
By BURC MARUFLU & STEVEN LEE The Chinese coffee market is booming, both as a consuming market, and increasingly as producing country as well! So much so that China is this year’s SCA Expo Portrait Country partner. Every year, the Portrait Country has the opportunity to introduce attendees to the coffees of their homeland at …
Looking Forward To 2018 Guild Events
Contributors: MARK HUNDLEY (BGA Events Chair, Bolt Coffee Company), FILIP AKERBLOM (CRG Events Chair, Lilla Kafferosteriet), REBECCA McNELLY (CTG Education Chair, Heartland Tech) & STUART RITSON (BGE Events Chair, Cafe Imports) 2018 Guild Events CoLab: Bucharest – 29-31 May | Bucharest, Romania CRG Retreat – August 23-26 | Stevenson, Washington, USA EU Barista Camp – September 3-6 | Evora, Portugal Access …
Introducing the New Leadership Equity and Diversity (LEAD) Scholarship Program
*Update on May 22: Point 2 in the participation criteria has been simplified to 3 years of experience in the coffee industry, removing the mid- to senior-level management experience previously required. LEAD is designed to open doors to underrepresented people in our community and we believe this change in the requirements is the right step towards …