A Recap of SCA Expo 2022
One of the events we always look forward to is the annual Specialty Coffee Expo. It’s an opportunity for us to meet with friends, coffee producers, exporters and importers, vendors, and check out all sorts of new coffee products. The last Expo we attended was in 2019. The 2020 expo was cancelled due to the pandemic, and we decided to skip out on the 2021 expo because we didn’t feel like it was safe for us to travel. With the world starting to feel close to pre-pandemic times, we were really excited to fly out for this event and meet with people we haven’t seen in years!
There’s a LOT that happened during this weekend, and our days started early and ended late. Lauren, Corey, and I all had our own goals to accomplish, and while we split off into different directions throughout the weekend, we also made time to get together both on and off the expo floor to meet with some of our partners. Here’s a very little snippet of what our weekend was like—and a teaser of what’s to come!
A 7:00am meeting before the opening of expo floor and the start of lectures require a lot of coffee. We met with Brian (right of Lauren), our partner at Falcon Coffee Importers and Gabriel (middle) and Valentina (left of Corey) of Siruma Coffee. Valentina is the CEO of Siruma, and is responsible for the spectacular Colombian coffee we use in our Wind & Sea and Shore Leave Hook blends.
Stopping for a photo after lunch with Joel (left) of Co. Trade Imports and Drew and Jen (top) of Goodel Indonesia. Goodel works with coffee producers in Indonesia, and their partnership with Poda has lead us to purchasing our first wet-hulled coffee from Sumatra, produced by the Sidikalang Poda Women’s group. This coffee is also returning to our menu later this year.
We found a friend! Corey and I met Emmett in 2020 during our trip to Bella Vista, Mexico and we hadn’t seen him since then! Expo doesn’t really end after the convention hall closes for the day—there‘s many events through out the evening, and here we are at a local brewery for a happy hour hosted by Miir, who we work with to bring you our camp mugs & thermoses!
Another early morning meeting—this time with Ricardo of Cafe Rivense del Chirripó in Costa Rica. The last time we had seen each other was in Boston Expo 2019! Although Cafe Rivense also exports coffee from other farmers in their area, we source honey processed coffees from one of their family farms, Los Cipreses.
We visited the Sustainable Harvest Importers table to find Ivan (left), Kevin (below), and Kenny (right), of Belift Green Beans in Indonesia brewing some coffee they are exporting to the US. They’re the folks responsible for setting us up with our first single origin anaerobic natural coffee from Argopuro, Java that we’ve come to love—and is returning to our menu later this year!
Stopping by the Guatemalan Coffees booth to meet with Erick and his family of La Planta Coffee Estates in Esquipulas, Guatemala. Our Short Strand blend uses some of his family’s coffee in our Short Strand blend, and as his family’s business continues to grow, we’re working towards sourcing all of our Guatemalan blend component coffee from them.
We found another friend! Karla is the Founder of Cru Chocolate in Roseville, California, and we buy her craft single origin chocolate bars from time to time and sell them online and at our cafes. It was Karla’s first time attending Expo, and now she plans to go every few years. She said she finds a lot of value in learning about the coffee industry because there’s so much overlap with the cacao.
We decided to skip out on the last day of Expo to take a trip to Cape Cod and with our friends Shayna and Manuel of Snowy Owl Coffee Roasters, founded in 2015. They’ve grown since then and have locations in Brewster, Sandwich, and Chatham. It’s was really cool for us to see their operations and share some of our experiences as small but growing coffee roasteries.
The coffee bar in Snowy Owl’s first cafe, located in Brewster, Cape Cod. This is a cozy cafe that we definitely recommend visiting if you’re in the area!
