A Family Trip to the 2024 Specialty Coffee Expo

For the last couple of years we as a team have participated in the annual Specialty Coffee Association Coffee Expo.  Last year it was in Portland and we went with 5 from our team with the focus on training.  This year we took a different approach. It was just Jonathan, Noah and I for a part father & sons trip to Chicago but mostly a chance to continue to develop relationships with so many friends we have in the industry.

We started by reaching out to Perry from Selva coffee with the hopes of returning a favor.  In March of 2023 Eden and I have the amazing opportunity to spend the night in Costa Rica and the Montero family farm.  This year we got to spend the weekend with Perry by hosting him in the AirBNB we rented.  Each night Perry and I ended up watching basketball and talking coffee until the early hours of the morning.  It was a sweet time with a great coffee partner.  Keep an eye out for a coffee we’ll be launching from the Don Eli farm in May.  It is as great as the family.

One of the days at the show I made it a mission to spend time with many of contacts we have in the industry. We spent about 45min chatting with Jairo Ruiz from Finca Juan Martin, easily my favorite Colombian coffee farm. After 10 years of emails and phone calls, I was finally able to meet the Altieri family face to face.  It was so sweet to be met with a hug from what felt like old friends (check out or two Panama coffees from this family).  I made contact with some new producers and we’re excited to try to nurture those relationships.  There were cuppings and hallway conversations, laughs at parties and more laughs at after parties.  We connected with other roasters we’ve met on origin trips. In a post-COVID world I think you cherish these moments of connectedness more than ever.  We can’t take for granted times talking about our crazy Chiva driver from our 2022 trip to Colombia.

We also confirmed what we already have been learning.  Yields in nearly all regions are down a lot.  This is clearly a bad year for coffee.  Quality is up on microlots (that’s our sweet spot of buying), but there are a lot less of them.  This is why we love our relationships with our producers.  They have been working to find us coffees that our customers expect, but I intend to pay more than usual for them.

On a personal level, it was so much fun to spend a long weekend with the boys checking out Chicago’s coffee and food scene.  We had amazing meals and went to at least two coffee shops each day.  It got so bad, that Perry asked, “Do you guys only talk coffee?”  I was like, well we are on a coffee trip.

This year’s trip to SCA was one of the best ‘work trips’ I’ve ever experienced.

Take a look at some of the pics from the trip that fostered sweet friendships and will inevitably yield great coffee.