Featured Stories
The Specialty Coffee Association is now accepting nominations for the 2025-2027 SCA Board of Directors. The SCA will announce the slate of candidates selected through the interview process by Friday, August 30.
Cup of Excellence (CoE) and the Alliance for Coffee Excellence (ACE) are thrilled to announce a transformative partnership with the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) through the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) today at the World of Coffee Copenhagen trade show. This collaboration aims to unify the approach to defining and appreciating top-quality specialty coffees, ushering in a new era for the industry.
The Specialty Coffee Association is thrilled to announce the locations for the 2025 World Coffee Championships, to be held in four cities across three continents. These championships highlight unique skillsets within the coffee industry, providing a platform for thousands of coffee professionals worldwide to demonstrate their expertise, style, and passion for specialty coffee while celebrating the many hands that contribute to its journey.
After valuable input from 800 Early Adopters, community groups, and various industry stakeholders, we are progressing to the next phase of the SCA Coffee Value Assessment—the tool the global industry uses to discover value in coffee!
The Global Specialty Coffee Trade Show Comes to the Heart of Europe
The Specialty Coffee Association is now accepting nominations for the 2025-2027 SCA Board of Directors. The SCA will announce the slate of candidates selected through the interview process by Friday, August 30.
Cup of Excellence (CoE) and the Alliance for Coffee Excellence (ACE) are thrilled to announce a transformative partnership with the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) through the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) today at the World of Coffee Copenhagen trade show. This collaboration aims to unify the approach to defining and appreciating top-quality specialty coffees, ushering in a new era for the industry.
Latest Announcements
The Specialty Coffee Association is now accepting nominations for the 2025-2027 SCA Board of Directors. The SCA will announce the slate of candidates selected through the interview process by Friday, August 30.
Cup of Excellence (CoE) and the Alliance for Coffee Excellence (ACE) are thrilled to announce a transformative partnership with the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) through the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) today at the World of Coffee Copenhagen trade show. This collaboration aims to unify the approach to defining and appreciating top-quality specialty coffees, ushering in a new era for the industry.
The Specialty Coffee Association is thrilled to announce the locations for the 2025 World Coffee Championships, to be held in four cities across three continents. These championships highlight unique skillsets within the coffee industry, providing a platform for thousands of coffee professionals worldwide to demonstrate their expertise, style, and passion for specialty coffee while celebrating the many hands that contribute to its journey.
After valuable input from 800 Early Adopters, community groups, and various industry stakeholders, we are progressing to the next phase of the SCA Coffee Value Assessment—the tool the global industry uses to discover value in coffee!
Community Stories
After valuable input from 800 Early Adopters, community groups, and various industry stakeholders, we are progressing to the next phase of the SCA Coffee Value Assessment—the tool the global industry uses to discover value in coffee!
SCA Publications Manager Laurel Carmichael and Sustainability Director Andrés Montenegro were delighted to speak with Willy Foote, founder and CEO of Root Capital, the winner of the non-profit category of the 2024 SCA Sustainability Awards.
Sponsored Content by Kerry Foodservice
With summer just around the corner, it's the perfect time to add some exciting seasonal drinks to your menu. From boba tea bursting onto the scene to the reintroduction of dirty sodas, we’ve got several hot beverage trends that will keep you (and your customers) cool for the summer.
Sponsored Content by Coffees from Peru
Discovering the richness of Peru through a cup of coffee is possible. All you have to do is choose our specialty coffee and start living the experience. We encourage you to feel how the particularity of the aromas and flavors change according to the origin of the beans and show you the diversity of soils, climates, and altitudes that make each specialty coffee a unique delight. With this cup of coffee, you can enjoy its high quality and verify that it is due to the daily work of thousands of producing families who strive to obtain the best beans, putting into practice knowledge that has been passed down for centuries.
Sponsored Content by BWT water+more
The BWT water+more booth may have looked similar to previous years at a first glance, but lots has changed over this past year. At this year’s SCA Expo in Chicago (April 12-14, 2024), the water filtration experts officially introduced a newly-created team for the USA. Water optimizer BWT water+more is also an Event Host Sponsor this year and is inviting attendees to Copenhagen together with the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA). Actors from the entire coffee supply chain—from producers to baristas—will be meeting at the World of Coffee. In Hall C, Stand CD 007, BWT water+more will be presenting tried-and-tested water optimization solutions, special filters to make crystal-clear ice for cold drinks and its latest development, BWT bestbarista ROC Coffee.
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After valuable input from 800 Early Adopters, community groups, and various industry stakeholders, we are progressing to the next phase of the SCA Coffee Value Assessment—the tool the global industry uses to discover value in coffee!
The Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) is proud to announce that the Coffee Value Assessment (CVA) and its tools are now available to use in the digital space, on two platforms: the Tastify Web App and iOS/Andriod application, CatadorCVA. The online platform Tastify and the next generation of the Catador cupping app, CatadorCVA, have adopted the CVA for digital use.
World of Coffee Jakarta marks the first World of Coffee trade show in Indonesia and focuses on a deep-rooted connection to one of the largest coffee-producing and exporting countries in the world. Indonesia ranks as the fourth largest coffee producer in the world and the second largest in Asia. Indonesia, renowned for its esteemed coffee-growing regions such as Sumatra, Java, and Sulawesi, offers a rich tapestry of flavors and traditions that are deeply ingrained in its coffee heritage.
Yoonseo Choi advises coffee retailers on how to succeed in e-commerce.
Payhere is a Point-of-Sale system chosen by one out of every three new coffee shops in Korea.
Kona coffee growers in Hawaii are now eligible for settlements in a 2019 class action lawsuit; Digital Coffee Future will host a series of webinars on the intersection of climate change and technology; Canadian chain Tim Horton’s has announced significant investment into the digital guest experience; UK press outlets cover the staying power of coffee consumption shifts.
US coffee roasters have seen significant cost increases in their operations due to shipping and transport logistics; Demetria, an Israeli-Colombian food-tech startup, closed a seed funding round after emerging from “stealth”; Hurricanes devastated more than 200,000 hectares of crops in Central America last year; a new coffee trend is sweeping TikTok.
World Coffee Research announces its next five year strategy will prioritize origin diversity; researchers at the the University of Reading, the Andean Information Network, and Pontificia Universidad Católica del Peru explore the similarities between Bolivia and Peru’s coffee and coca trades; 12 of the 16 winning lots in the recent ACE Private Collection auction with Hawaii’s Isla Custom Coffees featured controlled yeast fermentation in processing.
The Alliance for Coffee Excellence announced a partnership with scientific traceability company, Oritain, to build a database of coffee origin “fingerprints”; a new study explores the relationship between coffee leaf rust and a co-evolved hyperparasite; the International Coffee Organization’s Coffee Development Report 2020 finds the that the value of annual coffee exports has more than quadrupled from 1991 to 2018.
Rabobank Group, a lender known for financing agricultural traders, joined other commodity lenders in reducing its activity following a difficult year; the Hivos 2020 Coffee Barometer suggests there is little evidence coffee companies’ voluntary sustainability efforts have made an impact; Sucafina has announced a number of growth initiatives, including the acquisition of a Costa Coffee green supplier, Complete Coffee Limited; Seven Miles Coffee Roasters has launched a new telemetry system.
“Worlds Apart” tells the stories of the World Coffee in Good Spirits Championship and the World Brewers Cup, two competitions that take vastly different approaches to growing the specialty coffee community. Along the way, co-host Kimberly Yer leads us through stories of unlikely inspiration, the value of setting expectations, the push and pull of subjectivity and objectivity, and the shape of things to come through interviews with Dave Jameson, Cheryl Lee Su Yin, Nick Cho, Chad Wang, and Kristina Jackson.
25, A Publication of the SCA
Despite entering my sixth year of editing 25, I’m (somehow) still astonished at the organic way the editorial team often ends up with some kind of unifying link between all the features despite our best efforts to avoid any “theming” at the start of each cycle.
MARY BASCO, SCA Research and Knowledge Development Programs Manager, outlines the Coffee Science Foundation’s 2024-2025 Research Agenda and outlines which research projects are on the horizon.
Commodity market analyst JUDY GANES explains the Intercontinental Exchange grading process and considers how recent changes to this practice, which results in exchange-certified coffee and impacts levels of “certified stock,” are likely to impact C market dynamics.
SCA Sustainability Director, ANDRÉS MONTENEGRO, writes an “after action review” on the SCA’s Equitable Value Distribution Survey tool, offering insights into its process, highlighting key elements from its results, and providing early insights into how these results will impact the SCA’s Sustainable Coffee Agenda.
University of California Davis Coffee Center scientists LAUDIA ANOKYE-BEMPAH, IRWIN R. DONIS-GONZÁLEZ, and WILLIAM D. RISTENPART describe research undertaken in 2023 with a goal of developing new roast color standards for the coffee industry.
Drs. JOSHUA MÉNDEZ HARPER and CHRISTOPHER H. HENDON discuss the chemistry and physics behind the electrification of coffee during grinding, its effect on extraction, and strategies to mitigate it. All images are adapted from their recent academic publication “Moisture-Controlled Triboelectrification During Coffee Grinding,” published in Matter.
Corresponding author MATEUS MANFRIN ARTÊNCIO shares the findings of a recent paper, “The Impact of Coffee Origin Information on Sensory and Hedonic Judgment of Fine Amazonian Robusta Coffee,” published in the Journal of Sensory Studies, confirming the significant influence of origin information on the sensory perception of professional coffee tasters.
ALEXA ROMANO explores the emergence of specialty coffee culture as an embedded subculture within the broader coffee industry, and how the resulting shift from passive to active consumption asks us to rethink the consumer’s role in value creation and distribution.