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In 2024, the SCA will introduce the first major overhaul to its membership program in decades. The new model will focus on providing value and connectivity to the growing international community, enhanced features for companies, and new pricing structure.
The Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) are proud to announce the 2024 Sustainability Award finalists.
The Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) is proud to announce that the Thermoplan Black&White4 CTS is the Qualified Espresso Machine for the 2024-2027 World Latte Art Championship. This marks the first time that a fully-automatic espresso machine has been qualified for use in the World Coffee Championships.
On December 11, 2023, at an inaugural signing at the Panama Convention Center in Panama City, Panama, Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) Chief Executive Officer, Yannis Apostolopoulos joined a welcoming crowd alongside The Specialty Coffee Association of Panama (SCAP) President, James Hunter Tedman, and The Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Agriculture of Panama President, Adolfo Fabrega, to solidify the expansion of the World of Coffee Tradeshow to Panama in 2026.
SCA is proud to announce the third edition of Green Coffee Summit, a free-to-attend virtual event for anyone involved in the green coffee trade. Mark your calendars for December 5-6, 2023, and prepare for two days filled with insightful presentations, lectures, and panel discussions.
Join us for “Brewing Value: A Webinar on the Equitable Value Distribution Report” happening Tuesday, March 26th at 9am PDT, 12pm EDT, and 4pm GMT on Zoom.
The Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) is proud to announce the release of its latest report, titled "Equitable Value Distribution Survey Findings," marking a significant milestone in the effort to shape mindsets and business behaviors in order to foster equitable value distribution as a sustainability tool for the specialty coffee sector.
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Join us for “Brewing Value: A Webinar on the Equitable Value Distribution Report” happening Tuesday, March 26th at 9am PDT, 12pm EDT, and 4pm GMT on Zoom.
The Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) is proud to announce the release of its latest report, titled "Equitable Value Distribution Survey Findings," marking a significant milestone in the effort to shape mindsets and business behaviors in order to foster equitable value distribution as a sustainability tool for the specialty coffee sector.
Registration for World of Coffee Busan is now open!
Specialty Coffee Expo (Expo) North America’s largest B2B event for the specialty coffee industry will debut two new features at the trade show and conference taking place for the first time at McCormick Place in Chicago from Friday, April 12 – Sunday, April 14. The Green Coffee Connect program, sponsored by Barista Attitude, will offer interactive programming for anyone selling or buying green coffee. In addition, the coffee industry retail buyers who attend from around the world have an opportunity to gain access to a new Retail Buyers Lounge designed to provide a dynamic opportunity for retail buyers to network, conduct meetings, and explore potential business partnerships with exhibitors. The trade show and conference are owned and operated by the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA).
In 2024, the SCA will introduce the first major overhaul to its membership program in decades. The new model will focus on providing value and connectivity to the growing international community, enhanced features for companies, and new pricing structure.
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In 2024, the SCA will introduce the first major overhaul to its membership program in decades. The new model will focus on providing value and connectivity to the growing international community, enhanced features for companies, and new pricing structure.
We’re thrilled to announce that nominations are now open for the 2024 Sustainability Awards! The deadline to submit an application is January 31, 2024. The 2024 Sustainability Awards will recognize for-profit and non-profit organizations that advance sustainability in the coffee sector while inspiring others to design and initiate similar endeavors innovations.
Registration is now open for 2024 Specialty Coffee Expo taking place in Chicago, USA next April. Expo is North America’s largest B2B event for specialty coffee professionals and will be taking place at the McCormick Place Convention Center in Chicago from April 12-14, 2024.
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
The Specialty Coffee Association is the world’s largest coffee membership association, with a sustainability-driven purpose deeply ingrained in its structure as a non-profit trade organization: to make coffee better.
Anthropology Professor EDWARD F. FISCHER, author of Making Better Coffee: How Maya Farmers and Third- Wave Tastemakers Create Value, explains the different types of value, ways of determining worth, and how we create economic value by drawing on other sorts of values (moral, social, political, and other cultural values) through the lens of his fieldwork in Guatemala.
Anthropologist SARAH BESKY, PhD considers the relationship between tea’s sensory lexicon and ideas of quality across tea’s colonial history and current-day trading practices, highlighting that quality is far from an objective measure—and that it must be constantly reproduced in practice, including how we choose and use words to adjudicate quality over time.
CHERYL HUNG, lead researcher for the NCA's National Coffee Data Trends studies, traces the impact of the pandemic on coffee consumption in the US and Canada, highlights the collective urge to reconnect, and calls for the coffee community to focus on marketing the emotional benefits and the “softer” aspects of America’s favorite morning beverage.
Lead author Dr. MACKENZIE BATALI shares the results of a controlled and systematic study exploring the impact of the cold brew process on the sensory profile of the beverage it produces, recently published in MDPI’s open access journal, Foods.
Corresponding author HELEN VAIKMA shares the results of a study market mapping the sensory attributes of five different categories of plant-based beverages.
VAUGHN TAN highlights where uncertainty (which is not the same thing as risk) exists within specialty coffee’s supply chain, and questions whether the industry’s previous emphasis on the “direct” in “direct trade,” combined with a drive to rebuild leaner coffee supply chains, has had unintended side effects.